Seven Days
by SigmaRai
Summary: "Fact 1:This is Ootori Kyouya speaking. Fact 2:At 8:42 a.m. on Saturday, July 16th, a bus explodes at the Yuri-Cress intersection. Fact 3:In that explosion, Kyouya, you die." She has 3 minutes until the bus explodes and 7 days before she must hit rewind. Can time traveler Diana discover the assassination plot and save Kyouya? Ch. 12: Champagne. Kyouya's funeral.
1. Prologue: Activation

A/N: A friend of mine insisted it is impossible to write a KyouyaOC fanfic with an OC worthy of him, considering his ambition. I'm here to prove her wrong.

Ouran doesn't belong to me. Dur.**  
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**Seven Days**

**Prologue  
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* * *

><p><strong>=0. Activation=<strong>

Tamaki and Haruhi are going to get married in one week.

Kyouya grazed a hand across his face. It came away wet. The display of the cell phone clutched in his hand blacked out the text from Kaoru: "_r u ok?_"

Outside, the violent sun seemed to have locked downtown Minneapolis in a show of happy industry. A coffee cup tilted at matters of interest between a pair of soon-to-be-partner suits and ties, shades and gray pencil skirts and tight ponytails waiting for the WALK sign, bobbing backpacks overflowing with papers, I-pods and optimism, silver carts filling the streets with the odor of edible wares, the jackhammer pounding both concrete and the air senseless with anticipation. Beyond Kyouya's black-tinted world. A red double-decker pulled onto the street from the corner, with a young girl grasping for the white balloon that had broken free of her hand. Kyouya watched it rise past countless windows of 8-to-5 workers. He thought fleetingly about how unusually long the red light was when the balloon disappeared beyond the range of his window. Did it ever slip past the cage of skyscrapers?

Green light. The man in the fiber-optic mirrors that lined the inside of the back of the limousine had tears streaked down his face.

"Close the privacy," Kyouya called to the driver. Like an inverted guillotine, the mirrored wall emerged between them and cut off Kyouya's view of the driver's head, reflecting the busy crosswalk behind him. He watched the suits and gray pencil skirts and bobbing backpacks grow smaller and, were he in a better mood, would have laughed aloud at the woman whose stiletto heel caught and ripped off on the drain lid. He imagined they might had something in common, that woman and him; although he himself did not have much experience with the misfortune of a mutinous heel, he thought, for a moment, at the very same time, the two of them were experiencing the same all-engulfing despair.

Surely enough, the world was absolutely shattering, and right in his face. There was that unmistakable crash of glass, and a blast of heat akin to stepping out of an air-conditioned haven into one hundred percent humidity, and the momentary loss of gravity often connected to the peak of a roller coaster, that moment when you knew the engineers and mechanics did it wrong, that moment when you were certainly about to die. Kyouya found himself on the roof of the limo, shards of glass all about him, face-to-face with his own bloody face in the mirrored privacy wall. For a moment there was regret that he had asked the driver to close this. Now he was alone in a makeshift coffin, soon to be staring at his own dead body, dying angry that the driver could not attend to one final service: Kyouya's forbidden wish.

He knew what he would have said. If he could find his hands, if only his brain could make his hands work, then maybe he could have sent Kaoru a message:

_Why couldn't this be Tamaki instead?_

* * *

><p><strong>=25. The Long Haul=<strong>

Tamaki and Haruhi are going to get married in one week.

Kyouya grazed a hand across his face. It came away wet. The display of the cell phone clutched in his hand blacked out the text from Kaoru: "_r u ok_?"

Outside, the violent sun seemed to have locked downtown Osaka in a show of happy industry. A coffee cup tilted at matters of interest between soon-to-be-partners suits and ties, shades and gray pencil skirts and tight ponytails waiting for the WALK sign, bobbing backpacks overflowing with Latin, papers, I-pods and optimism, silver carts filling the streets with the odor of edible wares, the jackhammer of construction workers pounding the air senseless with anticipation. Beyond Kyouya's black-tinted world. A red double-decker pulled onto the street from the corner, with a young girl grasping for the white balloon that had broken free of her hand. Kyouya watched it rise past countless windows of 8-to-5 workers and thought fleetingly about how unusually long the red light was when it disappeared beyond the range of his window. Did it ever slip past the cage of skyscrapers?

Green light. The man he saw in the fiber-optic mirrors that lined the inside of the back of the limousine had tears streaked down his face. Kyouya opened his mouth to tell the driver to close the privacy window. The words were lost amidst the squealing of brakes and the crash of the wineglasses on the shelf to his right.

"What the hell?"

There was a woman in front of the limo, heaving with her hands planted on its hood, as if through sheer strength alone she had single-handedly brought to a halt the vehicle. Her dark hair was a mass of sweat and desperation lining her jaw and engulfing her neck, the flap of her shoulder-bag swerving up with the wind, her navy blouse jacket sliding down to rest at her elbows. She looked up not at the driver, but directly at him, and for a moment there was relief in her eyes. Automatically her left hand pulled out-not a gun, a cell phone.

The driver rapped at the horn, but she didn't move, instead surveying the large screen on the building to Kyouya's right. What was she looking at? 8:42 AM July 19th. A reporter talking about the Women's World Cup. Japan won, big fanfare. Interview with Kaihori and Kumagai coming in two minutes. From the other side of the street, where a truck had rammed into an SUV's side, a man Kyouya guessed to be one of the drivers came cussing at the woman. She must have run from across the street. He grabbed the woman's arm and wrenched her backwards. Her trance was broken and she looked at the man-only as a glance on her way to looking at her cell phone. She smiled, and in a manner instantly declaring her American or European, she happily pecked him on the lips thinking nothing of it.

Behind her, the red double-decker at the next stoplight exploded.

Then there was silence. Panic. Run towards the bus, the bus with that girl who lost her balloon, see if she was all right? Kyouya didn't realize he was opening his door until someone running away from the bus barreled into it and slammed him back in. But that's right-were there to be more explosions? Sound came back to him again in the form of blaring car horns-the jam on the other side of the street because of the collision with the truck and the SUV, the cars from the opposite side of the street wanted to get away from the bus. Was anyone calling the police? Kyouya pitched forward and felt something eat up his knuckles, the knee, he twisted his knee-the woman. He'd fallen over the woman, who was scrambling about people's feet in the middle of a near-stampede. She cried out when her ring finger was smashed flat into the ground by a large woman's heel, but continued on, searching for something. She found it, was kicked aside quite by accident-why was the woman just staring at the cell phone? What the hell did she think it was used for?

She picked herself up, muttering something to herself, and searched faces. Someone knocked into Kyouya's shoulder. There were questions, the obvious ones. Kyouya wasn't answering whoever it was, unable to tear his eyes away until at last she found him. Then he looked away. He couldn't tell why. _She _was the suspicious one; why did he look away as if he was the one acting improperly?

"Get in the car!" American accent.

Kyouya was opening the limousine door for her. She looked back at the screen again before jumping in.

"Tell Tamaki's driver to do his job," she said before he could close the door.

"Drive." Kyouya looked back at her. "How did you-?"

"I mistimed it." She was wiping the sweat off her hands onto her trousers. She looked at him expectantly, then reminded herself, "Oh, you don't know yet."

Kyouya watched the driver try to haggle his way through, alternating methods from horn to threatening to run people over to hand motions. Tamaki lets his driver give people the bird?

"No, whatever it is," he said, "I don't know it. I also do not know if I should thank-"

"Don't." She opened the cell phone with an irritated snap. It was one of the old kinds that folded closed, not a slide-out-mini-keyboard type. T-Mobile? "Guess they timed it after all."

"I don't understand."

"Yeah, yeah, when we get back to the hotel you'll explain everything. To you. Through this." She held up the phone.

"This is?"

"No, not gonna do that this time. You always say you won't laugh, and then you slide your arm back over that rest there and do that low laugh in your throat. The kind people can't hear but can see in your Adam's apple bobbing."

Kyouya raised a brow. "Well, now that you have mentioned a hotel, what makes you think I'll allow you to take me there? Let me guess, this is a setup, right? But instead of Tamaki, who you were expecting in this car, you got me. You do realize I'm-"

"Kyouya Ootori of the Ootori Medical zaibatsu, son of Yoshio Ootori and "Mother" of Ouran High School Host Club, with a private army of officers and detectives very capable of extorting whatever information I have on whomever I work for, yeah, I heard that spiel enough. Oh, and, friend of Kaoru and Tamaki and Haruhi, with a father that expects you to do better than your older brothers and a sister who is terrible at house-cleaning. And that belt's your older brother's."

Kyouya looked down at his belt.

"Here," she said, handing him the phone. "I forgot you let me have this. Should have just shown you this first instead of wasting all this time."

It was a photo of himself. With her. For an absurd moment he wondered if this was a repeat of Renge. No. He was standing with his tie loose. She was sitting pretzel-style on the bed behind him, a laptop on her lap and a Yoo-Hoo milk carton in her hand. There was a fish painting on the wall. He always hated that fish painting. Judging from the crooked angle, the bit of hand-his watch-he himself had taken the picture on this cell phone.

"That's your hotel suite at the Hilton Osaka. Look at the date."

July 23rd. Four days from now. What?

A set of blaring sirens drove past them. Then news crews in their vans. Terrorism in Japan! Maybe that reporter who was interviewing Kaihori and Kumagai should interview him instead.

"Oh!" said the woman. "Gotta call Mom before she floods my voicemail again."

Kyouya looked at the woman again. "What did you say your name was?"

"Your knuckles are bleeding, Kyouya."

They were. He didn't recall giving her permission to address him so personally. Before she could give him her name, however, her mother had already answered the phone.

* * *

><p>The rapid flush from cold to hot water was what awoke him. He had paused the automatic procedure of washing his hands when his eyes fell upon the bobby pins resting next to the newly opened bar of soap. Who was she? What did she want? They were a burst of shine first, then a chain of black pins each inserted into another's eye. Was it her American ignorance or a claim to equality that drove her to address him so boldly? He'd picked them up without meaning to and lost them in soap suds in the palm of his hands, but the solid bars his hands closed upon blasted holes into his momentary reprieve from reality. The bus explosion was movie matter and the woman surfing the TV channels outside his bathroom could have been a hallucination if he wasn't clasping onto her hair pains right now.<p>

"Well, _this _one certainly isn't going to make the cut," she said to him when he came out of the bathroom. "The collision resulted in more people backed up near the bus, so there were three more unnecessary deaths." She lounged atop the pillow of the king-sized bed massaging her wounded hand. With a jerk of her head, she indicated the menu from the hotel restaurant next to table lamp. "We're going to be doing a lot of talking, so I ordered your favorite. But 'til then, this should keep you busy."

Kyouya caught the phone in the hand that had been holding the hair pins, wincing for a moment at the thought of becoming infected by...something. Bad luck? Anything. She put the TV on mute and with a sigh leaned her head back on the headboard, underneath that hideous fish painting, and directed him to the phone's voicemail.

_"You have...one...new messages." _

"Press four to skip that for now. Take a seat."

"_Skip new messages. You have...seven...saved messages. First saved message:_

_Fact 1: This is Ootori Kyouya speaking, and the woman that comes with this phone is Diana Reed. _

_Fact 2: At 8:42 a.m. on Saturday, July 16th, a red double-decker explodes on the Yuri-Cress intersection. _

_Fact 3: Your limo stops at the same red light as that bus. In that explosion, Kyouya, you die."_

Knock knock knock. "Room service!"

Diana rose out of her reverie and disappeared into the suite hall, reappearing with a rolling cart with two silver platters. She had begun a magnanimous bow as she pulled up the bell-like covers, but with a cry she suddenly dropped an inch, the covers a silver outburst upon the gleaming linoleum.

"Damn heels."

Kyouya flipping closed the mobile phone. "What is this?"

"Mango Grilled Tilapia. You love it. Believe me."

"I was talking about the phone."

"Well then." Replacing the silver covers that now reflected the blue "Breaking News" banner of the voiceless TV, she wheeled it away to the dining room. "Today is the beginning of the end, but we should start from the beginning anyway."


	2. Fact 1: This is Kyouya Ootori speaking

A/N: Here's the next chapter. They're not going to keep coming this fast though. :( But enjoy!

**Seven Days**

**Day 1**

**Fact 1: This is Ootori Kyouya speaking, and the woman that comes with this phone is Diana Reed.**

* * *

><p>"Well then, Miss Reed, I don't suppose there is any need to welcome you to my suite."<p>

Diana held a haggard slab of uncut fillet hanging over her fork like an umbrella top, mango rain oozing down the side.

_I imagine she must never have come across a knife before_, Kyouya thought.

She was apparently thinking along the same lines: "Don't mention divorcing elbows from tables right now. I keep forgetting I'm starving at this point. And I talk with my mouth full; just look at your fish and deal."

Kyouya leaned back against the chair, one foot resting on the other's knee. _I don't know enough yet. My time will come. She runs the show for now. _

"Kay, dis iz gedding old dow, I'be arready eaden diz exagg fish sigs dimes dow. (cough) Wow, that's a very disturbing thought. Wait...is it overcooked this time? ...Mmm, must be imagining things. Going insane already."

Kyouya looked down at his own food as she had suggested; it was even less appetizing than a minute ago, the sweet orange sauce glossing the tilapia like some sickly discharge lining the miniature valleys of its dead-white flesh.

"Last time, you were not able to be eat for the next twenty hours, maybe more," said Diana with a jerk of her fork, "so eat up. And I used to tell everything like a story, but you interrupt so much it's easier to just do this Q&A style, so shoot."

The sky outside the seventieth floor had become murky water. Shapes of black ghouls silhouetted by flashes of light, the false promise of the morning sun an abject betrayal to the city of Osaka. Haruhi. He regretted thinking of her instantly. A worn out chain of thoughts was bound to follow. Was she with Tamaki? Was he giving her hand a light squeeze under the table as he conversed with potential clients of the Ouran University? The insatiate growling in the air held the suite in the grip of a black beast, the infernal cancer that had crawled itself in the folds and creases of his brain. This was a thing to be kept in shadows, but Kyouya had switched his trains of thought off the local lines and the expressways, had driven it deep into forgotten repair sites that needed repairing, had run his white lights over the brooding, homeless amoebas that once were anger, envy, despair, now formless until the light could mold them into something. He could see the news crawl on the TV from where he sat. Forty-seven killed, one twenty-five injured-and he almost laughed to see the footage of the victims on their stretchers, their platforms to heaven or hell, as they deserved, being carted directly into the yawning mouth of the Osaka University Hospital.

"So the first time this happened," he said, "I died."

Diana nodded.

"Was I taken into one of my father's hospitals?"

"Flown out in a helicopter too. It was absurd, the whole black-suit crew carting your body through a busy lobby, standing there in the silver elevator waiting to get to the top of the Sears tower. _Eighteenth Floor: Replacement Parts Division: Kitchen Appliances_, _Forty-Fifth Floor: Portable Electronics and Car Audio_, and then the shining chopper blades drowning out what your men were saying...they'd been speaking into the mikes in their collars and were able to hear each other through the tiny speaker in their right ears, and they'd just realized I wasn't your girlfriend. You've got some newbies in that group. Might want to take care of that."

A ringing erupted before Kyouya could ask his next question.

"That should be Kaoru," said Diana. "Go on and answer it, or he'll come hunting you down to see if you're okay. Gets a little inconvenient."

Kyouya stood up and turned away from her, walked over to the full-wall window. "Kaoru."

"First you tell me to call you, and now you don't pick up?"

"What?" Kyouya checked his logbook. Three minutes ago. He dropped the English and dropped his voice. "Thunder. I didn't hear it."

"Thunder doesn't rumble that long."

"It does at my suite."

"How are you?"

"I'm—" Diana had already downed her water and was chewing on the ice leftover as she watched the news. Kyouya turned back to the window. "—fine. How did you—?"

"Tamaki called to ask why you hadn't shown up."

"Oh yes, with his limo. I sent that back."

"Are you still at the scene? I'm not seeing you in any of the shots."

"I left before the reporters got there. Preferred not to get tied up in that commotion."

"Yeah. Did you get the iPhone 4S two months early? Did something happen at the bombing?"

"What?"

"You sent me a text from the new phone, didn't you? To talk to me about it?"

Kyouya sent another look over his shoulder at the woman. She wasn't there. The shock wave that went through his body was like watching the double-decker explode again. His shoes left black rubber tracks across the floor with a tormented squeal, and he had to catch himself upon the table to keep from falling. Propelled by the sudden crash, a knife had jumped off the table and skittered across the floor, the head of the fish he had unconsciously skewered earlier sliding across the floor behind it.

"Kyouya? You there?"

She wasn't on the bed, in the bathroom, in the spa room, in the veranda, in the pool room, at the bar counter. He doubled up again. He found her curled up between a sofa and the bed, where the bedside table had been. Mesmerized by an infomercial of a laundry detergent.

"Dammit, did the call get dropped? Kyouya!"

He stood looking from Diana to the infomercial to Diana, then walked back to the windows saying, "Kaoru, give me the number of the phone."

"It's not yours?"

"Kaoru."

"Right, fine. Weren't you supposed to be at an interview right now?"

Kyouya entered the number into his address book. "Forget that. Are you hosting today?"

"At four again. Surprised the factions actually came together to pass the ordinance after all." Sigh. "That took out half of my customers, but at least I can sleep before the sun comes up, right? I guess I can settle."

"Fifty percent. I told you it didn't matter that the girls didn't get out of their waitressing work until two in the morning." The words were far away from him. A constant drone was going through his head in the background. "That young head of police is well-beloved," he was saying. _What the hell is she doing? _"If he says minor nighttime prostitution because host clubs keep people out drunk this late is not something he is going to tolerate, then no one will." _Why is she watching infomercials? _"I told you to get out of that industry before the ordinance kicked in." _Where is she supposed to be right now? _"I can't believe I'm saying this to you. To you, not Hikaru." _She made it a choice to save my life. _"How is design coming for him?"

"As in is he actually doing his homework?" replied Kaoru. _How did she know about the explosion? _ "Yes. He got the internship." _How did she meet me first?_ "Kyouya, are you all right?" _Was I dead the first time?_ "I mean, you almost got killed." _When was the first time __**I**__ met her?_ "Seriously, how could you be so calm right now?"

"I run a hospital." _What is she doing here? Why is she here?_ "I can't save everyone." _What does any of this have to do with me?_ "Call you later." _And if it is her choice to save my life, what do I have to do to keep it that way?_

"Kyouya." Kaoru was silent for a moment at the other end. "Never mind."

"That was an unusually long phone call," Diana said when he joined her watching the TV set. "Didn't happen before. But you know what did?" She pointed to the windows. "Paparazzi. That's why I'm..." She cleared her throat. "Here. You got in a sticky mess with your father, took you out of commission for a full day. I can't have that."

"All right." Kyouya folded his arms. "I don't know why you are here. And I don't know what you want from me. But it is very clear to me that you have something in mind."

"Yes. To stop the bombing. No collateral."

Kyouya gave the TV a sidelong glance. She had switched it back to breaking news. "That's already happened."

There was a sly smile on Diana's face. "You know," she said softly, "it's these little twists in the way this week unfolds that I'm living for nowadays. 'That's already happened.' Really, Kyouya, I'd like to tell you something about that. To stop the bombing, no collateral, that's not what _I_ wanted. That's not how I originally dealt with this, um, problem. That's actually what you said, the first time I met you. That's what _you_ wanted. Lie down on your bed so it doesn't look like you're talking to me; we're being watched."

Kyouya sank onto his bed, his head slipping between two pillows. A migraine was coming. "And where does what I want fit with what you want?"

"Well, Kyouya, I hate to have to spout out all these disgusting clichés, but they're clichés because they get the point across beautifully. Let's see, uh, what time is it now? Ten thirty? A bus explodes right in front of my eyes, and forty-four innocent people die in it. Then I find it in my power the ability to turn back time, to start over, to step in with a helping hand and alter the course of...fate, history, destiny, or what-have-you. To the woman I was two hours ago, this was, how to say this...appealing...but I didn't know it yet. Clearly, I could not save everybody, but with this power, I could save someone. Some of them. Then the trick became making sure to find the right people." Her eyes took on the glaze of memory as her words trailed into a whisper. "Isn't that what the world deserves? Here is a chance to reward goodness." She chuckled humorlessly. "It becomes a natural responsibility to be the hero."

"So you're being the hero?"

"Let's say that."

"So what do you want me to do? I'm afraid your explanations make little sense to me, so I don't imagine I could be particularly useful, Miss Reed."

"Oh, that's right," she said, suddenly switching to fluent Japanese. "I should be calling you Ootori-san, shouldn't I? Well, Mr. Ootori-san, last we were together, we were trying to uncover who was behind this whole mess. You can check out the spoils in here."

The cell phone came flying into his vision and landed on his face. He muttered a curse and checked his glasses, then picked up the black phone. Sleek, black buttons with numbers glowing in green Tahoma, the center TM on the grand button centered at the top between Call and End was not the logo of T-Mobile as he had previously believed. He dialed one. Voicemail. Skip new messages. Skip first saved message. Next saved message. There were three more "facts," as he had apparently decided to designate them, and three more in the next saved message. He listened to them both, redialed voicemail, listened again, redialed voicemail, listened again, redialed voicemail, snapped the phone shut before it could play again.

He was leaning over his personal bar counter now, tapping half a wineglass of Cognac on the glass and hissing at Diana to stop swiveling in circles on the bar stool beside him. There were ten calls unanswered on his cell, from his father's butler, from Tamaki, from Mori, from the department of young volunteers at the hospital. (What the hell did she have to tell him right _now_?)

"I should be making a public appearance," he had said to Diana at some point, though he could no longer pinpoint when. "I should be attending some conference to vouch the support Ootori Medical will provide in the days coming as the culprits of the tragedy are brought to justice." He lit a cigarette. "Or something like that."

Diana was absorbed in ringing music out of the half-empty Cognac bottle and his glass with the corkscrew. "You never needed to do that because your father did. And about the cigarette," she pointedly stood up and returned to the living room, "it'll be an irony just for you and me, but that doesn't mean I approve of it."

"I don't understand."

"What isn't there to understand about cigarettes being gross?"

"All these messages. How did you get a hand on this? How did we discover—" Unable to find an appropriate word, he resorted to shaking the cell phone at her. "Stop being so damn lazy and just start at the beginning like you said you would!"

Diana intercepted the phone on its one-way trip to the flat screen television. "Kyouya! Careful with the merchandise, or we'll be stuck in this reality forever!"

"I meant to..." Kyouya looked at the wineglass he had meant to throw. "Wait, what?"

"You want the beginning?" She held out the phone. "This is it. Everything starts with this."

* * *

><p><strong>Research is my friend. :) Until next time!<strong> 


	3. Cold Coffee

******Whoa. It's been a year. I forgot how much fun this was. :P  
><strong>

**Chapter 3: Cold Coffee**

The dawn was brilliant on that July 19th, and it was the only thing that made it okay to be out of bed a full three hours earlier on a Satu rday morning. As Diana would have it, Saturday mornings did not exist. The world moved directly from Friday night to Saturday afternoon, and there was nothing to be missed during those solid twelve hours of sleep. However, today was going to be marvelous reason to party all night, with movies and video games and birthday cake. Tsunade's birthday cake, not hers. But the birthday party wasn't the only reason. Today, Diana Reed was going to get...

...a job. She knew it, deep down in her gut, lodged somewhere between her large intestine and her spleen, that rash buoyancy of a fully functional Plan A for life.

At 6:30 she'd leave her apartment for her morning jog, and then a quick hop into the shower at 7:10 (her neighbors used up all the hot water, of course), and then came curling her hair and cursing the hair dryer and finding out she had lots of cream cheese, but no bagels, and not being able to find her pantyhose and running back into the shower to shave her legs after all, and then shining her shoes and praying the loose heel didn't come off today, and then all but getting to the subway and remembering the present was still under her bed, and at last, fast forward to sitting in the bus stall because the subway line she needed was being repaired.

Oh the infinite stresses of the normal lifestyle. She would discover over the course of the next week that the middle-aged man sitting beside her ran out of toilet paper, the skateboarder smoking at the stoplight had a trig test the coming Monday, the Riza Hawkeye cosplayer across the street had recently lost her cat, and the young woman with the baseball cap sported a fake police badge inside her knapsack.

Diana stretched and soaked the sunlight in, watching cars go by for a while, ripping through her shoulder bag for her cell phone when a Pikachu school bus went by (a great picture and bragging rights for life).

"Oops." The present had fallen out of its box. The wrapping on the lid had taken on severe damages from her un-stopped lipstick, now a perfectly bloody, cherry-scented mess. Well, Tsunade liked cherries.

She checked her watch. 8:39 a.m. Come to think of it, she hadn't actually tested out how well her present worked yet. She pulled it out of the box, flipped open the screen, held down the power button and nodded approvingly at the jingle that announced its functionality.

"Activation complete. Reversion point set," chimed the phone, the _TM_ button between the _Call_ and _End_ buttons blinking.

_Oh, sweet, it's even got events programmed in!_

She checked her watch again. 8:41 a.m. She was supposed to be on her bus right now. The road was wide with a lane on each side devoted just for roving buses, but not a single one attended her side. Because they were on the other side.

"Oh! Stupid! Sumimasen! Sumimasen! ...Sumimaseeeen!" Diana had scrambled to get all her possessions together as she dove into the chaos of the crosswalks. She managed to run directly into Riza Hawkeye, offer an unconscious apology, step on the drain lid and get stuck, all in time to watch Plan A pull out into the street and take a right turn out of her life.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu dge.

It was as if the whole world blew up like her job prospects. Like a balloon. A great big _POP!_ that left nothing behind. But it wasn't a simple and clean pop; it was ongoing anguished metal and dumb-luck surprise and a blast of heat punching through the air, and a sudden, collective, tumultuous cry and disbelieving 'o's on every face. The center of the universe was a mass of fire and a plume of smoke, like a miniature volcano, complete with melting lava—the blood pouring down from the twisted windows—and the black volcanic glass rocks from eruptions before—the crushed obsidian limousine turned on its head.

She couldn't say anything, the shock an aggressive hand clamped over her mouth.

Someone moved. That middle-aged man who needed toilet paper. He was halfway up the street, shouting for someone to call the police over an unending car horn. The world watched him pick up a metal bar that had fallen off some vehicle—perhaps the pizza van—and ram it through the back window of the bus, dislodging the remaining shards and searching for survivors in the horrid wreck that had just exploded in the intersection behind her. There was a child dead (_just sleeping, just sleeping, just sleeping_) on the tarmac, flung out of the roof of the double-decker. Another man had sailed out onto the windshield of oncoming traffic, his corpse now ludicrously hugging the pickup truck.

"Is it...safe?" she whispered to herself. Someone stirred beside her, and for a moment Diana felt the absurd urge to laugh: Riza Hawkeye was calling the police. Then another absurd desire followed: What did the inside of a limo look like?

_Well, a limo sustaining bleeding corpses and the damages of an explosion would not suffice an accurate representation of what a limo regularly looks like_, she reminded herself.

People in the nearby cars came out, some injured themselves, others carrying the injured, one trying to limit the fire in the car behind his own by throwing a heavy jacket at the source. A woman was doing resuscitation, a ring of self-conscious onlookers surrounding her. Diana considered joining them, then decided to turn away. Was it cowardice, to not want to see dead people? A natural psychological repulsion? A defense mechanism?

There had been music before the explosion, she had realized, a happy humming in her head all throughout her day. Now there was silence. Her head was empty. And she was lost.

* * *

><p>The thing about taxis in Japan is that one drive could well cost near 2000 yen, and Diana being the cheapskate she was, was not going to pay $25 for it. But she was making up for that at the nearest Starbucks as she considered whether the job offer could stand a bombing. Come to think of it, perhaps the bombing had saved it! In which case, she really should have been getting a taxi instead of coffee and bonbons. Well, if the bombing could save her job, maybe she could get away with "fixing her head" as well. She should really call in to let them know she was fixing her head after seeing an explosion. But were there to be other bombings in Japan now? Had there been other bombings in other cities? Was this the beginning of something? Should she just head back to the United States?<p>

She delved into peanut butter bliss and sinful chocolate pleasure as she considered how to get anywhere from here. She wasn't about to take a bus anytime soon, and taxis shared the same space with buses anyway. Subways...well, one would think the density of people on Japanese subways might protect the people farthest away from side explosions, but then there were caving tunnels to worry about. Surviving an explosion seemed to have turned all her thoughts hideously morbid. Should be curable with a dose of coffee and a look at her wallet.

Which left her only one option: walking. Laborious, slow, unable to take her to her job prospects and impossible with a single heel on. She'd have to take them off.

Another bonbon.

The TV was going, changed from a nature documentary to the breaking news that didn't break her. There was no guilt in her, for surviving, or for not staying to help the survivors—what help could she be? In fact, she would only be in the way, a sickeningly curious tourist to some death-filled universe in which she did not belong. The explosion? A matter of movies and headlines, contained on silver discs with twirling rainbows when held under a light, or encapsulated in the rounded font Georgia or the cutting Times New Roman at the news crawl on the bottom of a plasma screen. A dream not yet turned a nightmare because she had turned away from the danger. As far as she was concerned, it truly did not affect her. The next morning she would still wake, jog, shower, cuss at her hairdryer and realize there were still no bagels in the fridge.

The time was afternoon, and she had already eaten a week's worth of bonbons. She could go to Tsunade's early and help decorate. Diana took out the present again (_it really does look like a cell phone_), and tried to ignore the discontented murmurs of the table of college students just finding out about the explosion.

The display screen on the 'cell phone' read: _Would you like a tutorial on how to use all the functions of the Time Machine? Dial 0. _She smiled. For twenty-four dollars, _like new_, on Ebay, this was pretty nifty. She pressed 0.

"This is an automated information service for Time Machine version..._3.17_," stated a female voice recording. "All information is always up to date. This module was last modified on..._March 3rd_. Thank you for choosing Juiz. Main Menu: One: important product information. Two: limits and safety guide. Three: functions. Four: tips and common errors. Five: other. Press nine to exit tutorial."

Diana laughed softly and pressed two.

"Limits and safety guide. Number one: the Time Machine can only go backwards with a maximum of seven days, to a designated Reversion Point that is set upon the activation of the phone."

She canceled the tutorial; like a vast majority of people, she didn't refer to manuals until she broke something. What was this phone programmed to say once she held down that big TM button? What little tricks was it composed of? This was certainly going to get some laughs at the party.

The black screen went blank with a blinking white cursor. Then, "Reversion: 26" turned to "Reversion: 25." That's it? She reached for her fork to get another bite of the fantastic coffee cake she had bought as an afterthought, but her fingers closed on something red. The bow-wrapping of the gift-box in which she was going to give the Time Machine. She looked up.

Across the street, Riza Hawkeye switched a song on her I-Pod, heading towards the crosswalk as she pocketed it and blew a bubble. Diana looked back at the Walk-Don't Walk sign on her side of the street. No one there. All right. Another phone rang. The middle-aged man next to her picked it up. "Toilet paper?" he said.

The sound of rolling. Diana jumped. She saw him pass, the skater boy who was about to stop at the sign and take out a cigarette and get shards of flying glass flung at his face. This wasn't happening. She sprang to her feet. This couldn't be happening. The sound of the moving world flooded her ears. They were walking by, the people on the street, in a separate time, a separate field of time, mechanical and slow. She could feel them pushing air out of their way with their locomotion, and that air was forced upon her, squeezing her entire existence into a moment of omniscience. The limousine was pulling by, and then the screeching of the wheels of the bus came first, and then the metal beast came heaving into view around the corner, and this time she knew it was coming and she saw it rip apart. There was the bus torn completely out the side and the back, black smoke spewing out its ill intention. It had devoured the lives of so many, now regurgitating the wastes along the roof of the overturned limousine. The cars parked at the intersection were no longer parked at the intersection, but leaning against the walls of a building with a crying woman caught between.

Diana looked back at the phone in her hand. And pressed the TM button again, closed her eyes, and listened to the impatient staccato of rush hour traffic horns.

"Toilet paper?" said the man sitting with her in the bus shelter.

The Time Machine was real.

She threw herself out of her seat at the skater boy. He dropped with a thud and a vulgar expulsion.

"The bus is going to explode."

He frowned at her. "What's your problem?"

"Don't go that way; you're going to get hurt!" Diana surveyed the street, the ever-expanding street, with people so far out of her reach. "There's so many of you, how do I—?"

The screeching of the bus. Not again. She couldn't see it again. She turned, and followed where her feet led her, her broken-heel shoe coming off in her mad dash around the corner. A different intersection. No buses here. Different people. No pretend Riza Hawkeye, no people needing toilet paper—there was a weeping angel water fountain in the courtyard of an urban university, and college students, someone from her Data Structures class, laughing about something, and then the laughs died with the sharp crack in the air. She couldn't escape, she couldn't ever escape from that sound. No number of sidewalk cracks crossed would take her away from that sound.

She told the skater boy. He must know now. She looked about herself in an empty street. He'll tell someone. They'll find her. She had to disappear. She had to get out of here. There was a car, left unattended by the curious/concerned driver. But she couldn't, that would be more incriminating. She didn't have her purse—that was still at the bus stop. They had her already! She had to go back, get it before the police came. But what if that kid had already—it didn't matter, she had to go get it back.

"Diana!" The man from her Data Structures class crossed the street to her. "Let's go see what's going on." His two friends had jogged by the two of them already. She nodded agreement, followed. Too perfect. The wreckage she had seen enough. Her eyes wandered over the shoulders of hundreds of onlookers now; braver souls were already perched atop the remainder of the limousine attempting to find survivors in the bus. There was some success. The limousine—what about the people in the limousine?

Her purse, crumpled at the bus stand. She swiftly cut past the man who had recruited her back to the site, six feet to go, and her eyes came upon the skater boy's. He was standing behind the bus stand—how did she not see him? She froze. He froze. They both looked at the purse. She stepped forward, slowly, one step, two steps, another step, and the purse was suddenly in her hands and she was striding past the weeping angel, almost weeping herself, wondering why he didn't stop her.

* * *

><p>She had ordered a simple coffee and sat staring at it until the wisp of curling white smoke died away. She couldn't drink it because it was the color of twisted metal covered in blood. The coffee, not the smoke. Somewhere along the way, some busybody in a regal tie had turned on the TV and had stopped upon the scene of the accident and she watched, detached, as if it were an act. Was this the third time those paramedics had hoisted that man onto the stretcher? Or was this the second time, because she had traveled back too soon, before this could happen? Does that mean it did not happen before?<p>

Then some other waiter had come when the man with the tie left, and quickly changed it to something more appropriate to a coffee shop, and she went back to staring at her cup of coffee. She would have continued staring at it with her hands in her lap and her head completely blank were it not for the tap on her shoulder. It sounded like a knife going through cardboard, the impact of her knee with the table. Her coffee was all across the waiter's uniform.

"I am...so sorry," she looked at his nametag, "Kaoru. I will...pay for—send me the shirt, I will have it dry-cleaned and returned."

He gave her a dumbfounded look. "Maybe after we attend the knee?"

She looked down and hissed. A clear gash down her shin. "I look like I'd come from the accident proper, now." She gave a burst of laughter. It died shortly when the curious stares started.

Kaoru had already provided her with tissues and water to dab the injury, called for some antiseptic, procured ice wrapped in a cloth napkin. He motioned for her to resume her seat and said, "Now I could be apologizing profusely for startling you, and I truly am very sorry this happened, or I could offer you a year's membership on our Starbucks Gold Card rewards program. Tell me if I am pressing too hard." Coming to one knee, he gently dabbed at the blood crawling down her calf.

There was a scream of terror in her head. "No—you don't have to do that!" So many non-furtive glances in her direction. What if he—What if they—? Like an artist with a paintbrush, he was collecting the droplets of crimson with soft presses and strokes, gathering the trail into one napkin before switching to the next. What if he found out that—Now that she looked at him, she realized this was the waiter who had changed the channel of the TV away from the accident.

Kaoru smiled. "You are the customer, please let me serve."

She'd never had a man this close her legs.

He changed from damp tissues to the ice in the cloth napkin.

She'd never had a man this close to her feet.

"I noticed you did not drink your coffee," he said, "and had come by to ask if there was anything we could do to increase your satisfaction. We could perhaps provide you with an alternative drink?"

She didn't ever want a man this close to her feet.

"Oh, no, there was nothing wrong with the coffee." She had socks on, but she lost her one of her shoes so—her feet. They were sweaty. They were whiffy when they were sweaty. He must have noticed! What if he made a comment? She couldn't tell what she was feeling in her bleeding leg, the stinging of the loss of blood or the heat of every inch of skin he slid iced cloth napkin over. She fidgeted to force her skirt down to cover her other knee, bit her tongue to keep from crying out at the sharp pangs, and then said, "No, really, I can do this." She reached down to take the napkin in a hasty movement that should have forced the waiter away from her feet, but he simply looked up surprised and managed to bang foreheads with her.

For an absurd moment both of them instinctively smacked a hand over their own respective foreheads and rubbed at the victimized areas. There was sniggering at the next table, but Kaoru chose to ignore it and said, "You will have the antiseptic within the next minute. Now, Miss, if you could give me a name, that Gold Rewards card will be coming right up." He rose as he spoke, and pulled out his cell phone. "Tamaki." He dismissively shoved the cell phone back into his pocket and, equipped with her name saluted her and returned to the staff at the desk, pointing her out to the teen who had walked out waving the tube of antiseptic at him.

Kaoru came back with a steaming cup. "You looked like you needed cheering up even before you came in. So...you saw the accident?"

She nodded.

"Do you...want to talk about it?"

She shook her head. She had done a phenomenal job not thinking about it. She was going to go on not thinking about it until the skateboarder stopped thinking about her, and who knew when that was?

"No worries," said Kaoru as he took as seat across from her. "Maybe when you feel safer."

"What?"

He shook his head. "That's always how it is when a bad thing happens, isn't it?"

Was he actually telling her what to think right now? Did he imagine sitting over a caramel macchiato with a plastic smile plastered over his face and a box of tissues on her lap was all it took to overcome an event of this sort?

"What's wrong? I'm sorry, I guess you think it's not my place to talk but...you see, I watched my brother spend years with pent up frustration. It was obvious what was killing him inside but he wouldn't say a word about it." Kaoru crossed his arms and placed his elbows upon the table, looking out the windows. "It's better to get it out of the way. The sooner, the better."

Oh, the sentimentality.

"What was wrong with him?"

Kaoru smiled through a sigh. "A broken heart." He bit his lip. "Bad enough he won't even go to her wedding next Saturday."

Oh, the drama. _By the way, people just __**died **__today. There was a kid who doesn't even have the __**chance **__at a broken heart, much less a wedding. Except maybe he already has a broken heart..._

He regarded her, and there was a momentary coldness in his eyes. If she didn't start making up some sentimental crap to satisfy him...well, he did just hand her a free Gold Rewards card. What was wrong with her? Was the pain medication not working, or was the bitterness of having lost all hope for a job finally setting in?

"There are a lot of things wrong today," she finally answered. She stopped. She could feel that pressure like magma building up under her throat.

After a minute of silence, he slid another card across the table. "If you feel up to talking tonight, since I don't work today. Just talk."

_Just talk. _His contact card for _Club Eden_. Oh.

His phone exploded. Diana's heart jumped out her mouth and leaped off to infinity and beyond as Kaoru caught his breath and answered the phone with an apologetic look. Then his eyes went blank. "Kyouya is...what?"

Why did it feel like a victory, as if she enjoyed the look on that face, slapped by the irony of life? She sensed right away that the call had something to do with the accident, and now he could understand it too. That need to talk about _something _else. Anything else. A distance, and a facade of giggling into a birthday cake she knew today would be too sweet, and she needed more than ever to find another box for her present, and another present too, because she could not stand the thought of holding out the bloody mess of the gift-wrapping inside her purse, because the Time Machine was the cause of everything, and regardless of how much she would like to drop it into the waiter's shirt pocket as he passed her, pass it off like it was his problem, she couldn't stand parting with the very thing that would give back two minutes of sanity into her life.

So instead she sat with her hands clenching the fake cell under the table.

Kaoru had flipped the channel on the TV back to the accident. There it was, now she could see it from the vantage point of the front of the bus, opposite where she had been standing, the questions that had already come into her mind falling off the lips of picture-perfect reporters who knew how to put on the mask of courteous concern. They knew it; this was the time to put out their faces. There's no news like really, really bad news to make the world get to know them, so here's the set of questions they will repeat over the next six hours for all the people dipping conscience and attention in and out of Channel 5, before moving on to the Japanese equivalent of Wheel of Fortune and cursing about the gas prices. Now they were showing a helicopter departing from the roof of the building across the street from the bus.

She looked away, having forgotten the waiter until her eyes fell upon his also untouched cup of coffee. When she looked back at the TV, he was gone.

She flipped open her cell phone and dialed with an eye on the windows. Voicemail. "Tsunade." There was a large, news channel camera perched atop a newsstand across the street. "I can't come to your birthday party." Its lens were pointed at her. "I'm sorry." The doors opened with a tinkle of wind chimes behind her. Long, lithe and sporting a baseball cap, the man undoubtedly the other half of the camera crew took a seat across from her and sipped at Hikaru's cold coffee.

* * *

><p><strong>I didn't realize Kaoru would play much of a role in this story until...he busted in. (shrug) The story's writing itself now. I don't remember the last time story came out so smooth and quick... How refreshing! Hope you enjoyed!<strong>


	4. Wicked Cinderella

**Chapter 4: Wicked Cinderella**

**"Everything's going to be okay." ~Kaoru  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>With the tousled hair of Cinderella doing overtime and an injured-knee token of her recent battle with the bus, Diana Reed seems every bit the unlikely criminal she aims to be. You couldn't imagine those big, blue eyes and that kiss-me smile could possibly be hiding murderous intent. But who was her true victim? Rumor has it the assassination of Ootori Kyouya was the primary objective—but who exactly has the mighty Ootori family enraged so? Izaya Orihara is on the case!<em>

* * *

><p>Diana rose to her feet, trying to keep her knees collected and trying to ignore the pain that still seemed to be shooting into her eyeballs.<p>

"Hey!" Ai Otsukano snatched the remote control out of her hands and sank into her lavish red couch, the walking heart of her plush apartment. Her very strides seemed designed to flush particles of gold or money or rich from the pores, like a poison diffusing through the room at the rate of hip-swings. "Look. If I hear one more time about fourteen dead and forty-six injured on that bus explosion yesterday, I'm throwing you out of my apartment." She rubbed at her temple with the corner of the TV remote, her eyes rolling up. "I _hate _mornings." Then she huffed and took a sip of her black tea. "It's no use. I can't remember the first half of yesterday and the second half was a headache I couldn't get rid of. You can't even get your voice halfway down to a man's, the hell are you wearing that host club uniform for?"

She hissed and stretched in the pause Diana thought was supposed to be for an answer. Diana sat back down on the stool at the breakfast bar with her cup of orange juice, a white shirt so big over her body the bottom of the shirt ended under the seat of her hindquarters and collected at her crotch like an unending wedgie. The black pants she had rolled up four times until she realized she looked like an idiot, and then promptly unrolled and stepped callously over a hundred times more, got caught in the escalators on the subway, tripped on the stairway to the apartment and discovered there was an assortment of dirt streaks, small rips and a piece of gum stuck to it. The overcoat of the suit was so big the shoulders drooped an inch or two down her arms, and she no longer knew where in the world the tie was anymore. This was undoubtedly not one of the uniforms Kaoru wore. That man was truly no bigger than her, barring his ridiculous hair.

"If you keep worrying that wig, you're going to ruin it, you know." Ai pointed her remote at the spiky blonde wig Diana had been turning, turning, turning in her hands as she was thinking.

It was blindingly sunny outside, but they sat with all the curtains drawn, each a combination of shadow and pale blue surfaces lit by a bathroom infomercial.

"So...tell me...how did you get into my apartment?"

Diana choked on her orange juice.

Ai cocked a brow. "Wow, you really did ruin every part of that outfit."

"Do you—uh—have a napkin?"

Ai made no move. Despairing that the woman truly had no intentions of helping her, Diana started to wipe the inside of the black overcoat against the yellow spots blooming down her shirt...only to spread them to a more uniform coating and the inside of the black overcoat. Which she just discovered used to be a light green.

"You really don't remember?" asked Diana. "Kaoru had—"

"I know what Kaoru did. He gave me his business card with the words _Two free bottles reserved_. But that is all he is right now. A fine face on a host club business card."

"You don't remember him!?"

"No. And honestly, I didn't remember you when I woke up and found you asleep at the kitchen table. I got so excited, a host in my kitchen! What did I have to do to drag you back! And then I realized you were a girl and—what was your name again?"

Diana's jaw had come loose in answer. It wasn't a nightmare. What this woman had done to her.

"Oh, snap out of it." Ai rose out of the cushions and pulled a cigarette out of the pack sitting on the TV stand. "So I brought you home with me, just like he asked. Now how long do I have to look at your face? I did what I had to do. Can't you take care of yourself now? Who told you to could go into my refrigerator?"

Diana looked at the last third of orange juice remaining in her glass sadly. "But _you _were the one who—"

"Oh yeah, I gave it to you when I thought you were a..." Ai cleared her throat. "You know, there _are _women who cross dress as hosts. There's a market for that too. But I'd highly recommend you give up on that. You..." Ai shook her head. "I don't even know what to say. Did you brush your teeth? Are you drinking that without brushing your teeth?"

Diana gulped down the remainder of the juice before it faced further threat of being taken away from her. That was all she had eaten since the bonbons the morning before, by god dammit if it wasn't the best orange juice of her life! ...Even if it had pulp.

* * *

><p><em>My young informant had told me to watch for a woman with a single red shoe, and as luck would have it, we had found the other shoe! My valiant cameraman Hongshu and I embarked upon a short journey in search of its partner. She sat cross-legged with two cold cups of coffee and an empty box of bonbons, clearly trying to console herself for her crimes in the Starbucks cafe several blocks away. I had approached her quoting myself to be but a humble reporter looking for a new angle to the story. What a grand look of shock when I proffered her shoe! "This is my angle," I said.<em>

* * *

><p>Diana tucked the white shirt even further down inside her pants to try to line the orange juice splotches behind the overcoat. She knew it wouldn't be safe to go back to her apartment—the reporter would undoubtedly have found her address and was probably puppy-guarding it. She didn't think he would have said anything to the police. Yet. She was still his big story. The big breakthrough he didn't want anyone else to hear about except from himself. That's why it was just a game of hide and seek between his camera and herself. And if she could lay low until the buzz died down...<p>

No. It would not matter. He knows she needed to go back at some point. She hadn't yet made any friends close enough to wonder where she had gone in her university and Tsunade was leaving town for a week and a half, so no one else would come looking for her, but her computer... She left her laptop, and she wouldn't put it past the reporter to try to break into the apartment when he got impatient. Well, her cell phone rested in her right pocket and the TM was safe inside the left breast pocket. Since she still had her cell phone, she could remain in contact with her parents and her brother to keep away any suspicions. There. Not all hope was lost completely. At least they could avoid the entire situation...though if her father had emailed her, she needed to get back to him promptly so he wouldn't become suspicious, and her Iphone only gave her two gigs on her data plan. No Youtube videos for a while.

But...from underneath the black English-police-cap hat that Kaoru had shoved over the blonde wig the night before, she regarded the overcrowded crosswalk, the TV monitors that dominated the second and third floors of the buildings across from her, and the taxis and cars parked at the stoplight for half a minute. _Where in Tokyo am I and where am I supposed to be next? _

She could stay on the run for a little while longer, or she could simply go back to the explosion, but she still had no idea what she would do from there. Naturally, given a time machine, she had to save the fourteen dead and forty-six injured. What kind of person wouldn't think of a way? Or try. Or try harder. There was no way she could live on through the remainder of the week doing nothing and then the rest of her life knowing she should-have, could-have, but didn't. But what could she _do _with...what was it, _two_ minutes?

She surveyed the streets again, noting a schoolgirl nudging her friend and pointing and smiling at Diana. She couldn't blame the girls, she looked totally ridiculous! A Caucasian dressed in host club attire, and her face so clearly a woman's, and—"the look of a rabbit in your eyes"—that's what Ai had said. She didn't look like a host because she didn't stand or act like one, and that only made her more suspicious. She couldn't stay in one place too long, gawking at the avenues and skylines, had to be natural, had to look generally unimpressed with anything and everything she passed by, maybe fret with her phone and be busy texting when waiting for a walk sign while discreetly checking the sign names from under the little hood of her cap. This cap sure was coming in useful for pretending to look down.

She found it. The place she would be going to next. _Tokyo Metropolitan Library, Hibiya Branch. _Library = computers = internet = emails and news updates = research. Perfect.

* * *

><p><em>I was completely taken aback hearing fluent Japanese pour out of her mouth with nary an accent. She resisted all questions, eager to get away but unable to escape due to her knee injury. No doubt the work of karma—she's destroyed the lives of hundreds and now fate will have her admit to her crimes! According to my trusty informant, here are the exact words the woman had said to him: "There's so many of you. How do I kill you all?"<em>

* * *

><p>"Hitachiin-san was expecting you," said the receptionist in front of the club. The explosive music of the club drowned out the next two sentences as the doorway behind her opened and shut. "That is...Edo-san's uniform you are wearing, aren't you?" She was trying very hard to keep a straight face. "And Hajimura-san was looking for that wig, but it looks right on you. In any case, Hitachiin-san took the night off specifically for you. He's got a lot of angry clients right now, so I'd keep my head down if I were you. Nice hat."<p>

"Y-Yeah. Thanks." Diana tried to keep breathing to a minimum. The smell of alcohol made her want to throw up. The fumes of cigarettes made her want to gag. All in all, host clubs smelled like shit.

It was only ten at night, so the club wasn't yet in full swing, and that was perfectly fine with her. She stepped into the blue and red fog-cigarette-smoke of the club, trying to keep her eyes away from the booths decked with one man and ten ladies, inebriated on thousand-dollar bottles of foul-smelling liquors. There was awful karaoke on her left and a roar of laughter on her eight and then she thought her ears stopped working because all she could see were figures flowing in and out of the dark and fog/smoke and lips moving without words and where did Kaoru take her the night before, how to get past the booths into the back rooms where he'd given her the clothes and there he was, reaching out to clamp her wrist and pull her violently through a mob of women—one of the hosts was moving booths for some reason—oh, that's disgusting, no wonder he wanted to move, they couldn't get that woman a bucket in time, or how many women were there fit to throw up now and—

"Why did you come back?!"

Diana blinked.

Kaoru rubbed his face with his hands. "I knew you would come back. I just knew it. A good thing I cancelled all my—but why did you come back—so—quickly?" Seeing how terrible all her clothes were fitting her, he caught her wrist and dragged her again to another changing stall, tossing a smaller shirt over the stall's top as he kept speaking. "Look. I'm not doing this for you. Don't misunderstand me. But Kyouya. You said you knew something about Kyouya. Now get changed, you look like shit. I expect you can use the makeup in the other room. We'll go out like hosts prowling the streets for customers. Be done in ten minutes, I'm going to get changed."

* * *

><p><em>Our Wicked Cinderella was clenching tightly to what looked like a cell phone underneath the table. When asked what it was, she became still and said what seemed plainly obvious. The police force would later tell us there was in fact yet another cell phone in her possession, so clearly one of them was her private phone and the other was means of communication with her superior officers.<em>

* * *

><p>"Why did you use the word prowling?"<p>

"What?"

After Kaoru had tried to teach her how to walk like a man—and he seemed very unusually disappointed with the results—they were strolling and semi-strolling along a line of well-lit souvenir shops. Whatever the color of the night she couldn't tell past the myriad screens overhead. They made the sky look red and purple, and it took her a while to realize the white light next to one of the streetlights was the moon peeking between clouds. This was the perfect place to get lost. The perfect place to not be heard, in the midst of the roar of excited tourists.

"What you said at the club," Diana said to Kaoru. "You said _prowling _for customers. A happy host wouldn't describe it like that, I don't think."

Kaoru smirked. "Happy. We're only happy because we're paid to be, in front of their faces." He had stuck fists into his pockets as he checked the road and leaped across it.

"Wait!" _Six lanes!_ If her heart were a ping pong ball, her ribs would have been Chinese Olympians. "Maybe a warning next time you do that!"

"Just try and keep up."

They walked a little more and stopped at a bridge before he spoke again, as if to the cars driving past underneath. "It used to be fun."

"What?"

"The host club. Ouran High School Host Club." He said something else, but it was lost in someone's horn. "But that's because we were serving the ultra-rich."

Diana crossed her arms. "What, are poor girls boring?"

Kaoru looked at her. "Poor girls don't have the option of spending forty thousand yen on a couple of hours with us. Middle class girls don't have the option of spending their parents' savings for their college education on a couple of hours with us. Those already driven into prostitution don't have the option to use their wages on a couple of hours with us." He looked at the morphing collage of red and white lights below him. "I made the mistake of developing a conscience."

"Tch, it sure would be easier without one," Diana smirked.

"Yeah." Kaoru put his hands on the cold bars of the railing, and they listened to the thrumming heart of humanity in the footfalls of passersby and the water-rushing sound of cars passing behind them.

"No, it wouldn't be easier." Diana pulled lower her hat. "I do a pretty good job of it, so no one can ever tell, really...but I've gotten to know addiction pretty well." She could feel her whole body starting to burn. A tickle in the muscles, in the center of each one of them, of every cell, a helpless restlessness that could only be relieved by running so fast her blood couldn't rush fast enough and her ears started ringing. "It starts with...curiosity. And then you find out you like it. You like it a lot. And maybe, you try it again. Sometimes you tell yourself you didn't _really_ get the full experience the first time. And it's okay. And you still like it. But then comes the third time. You do it again, you think it's gonna be the same, but it's not. It's not enough anymore. And you think, what's wrong? Come out of it unsatisfied this time. But then you're a little angry. You feel jipped. You feel like you _deserved _something, because you had all these high expectations, and then, to make sure you _really _get it right the fourth time you get some more. Make it more intense. Because there's nothing like disappointment, and now, you just plain don't have to deal with it. That's how it is. And you don't realize you're down on a fourth time because you're too busy thinking you deserved something.

"And then there's a fifth time. Or rather the opportunity, and then you start thinking twice and think, no, I don't need that, and by the time you've just finished with the thought itself, you've already texted your friend no you can't make it today, something's come up. And then you're thinking about how you lied to your friend the whole time but by the time it kicks in, what you just turned down for your addiction, what you just turned away, you're already gone. And then you get scared. Here comes your sixth chance and now you know you're going to make way for it and now you're thinking you gotta get outta this, you feel guilty, you feel bad, you feel irritable, and then you make deals. This is the last time. It won't happen again. And then you feel better.

"And then the seventh time comes by, and you can just repeat what you did with the last time or just—decide to stop feeling bad. And then you start feeling so good. And then you start getting angry at all the other people who insist on putting you down, like they're better or something. All this stuff that happens in your head. The things you say to yourself—but the worst—when you stop saying those things, when you stop even bothering to reconcile with yourself and struggle and tell yourself whatever it is you're doing is wrong... It's when that voice gives out that you're gone and you've already decided not to feel bad about it, so you don't. But then you realize you want to do something and realize you get in your own way and you hate yourself but then you go back to your secret pleasure and... You're at war with yourself. You hate yourself. So then you lose yourself more so you stop thinking about it. Or you get busy, so you can always be surrounded by your friends, or you work more, anything to stop thinking. Even a trip to the bathroom can be dangerous!"

Kaoru's knuckles seemed to pop off his hands. He didn't say anything, his jaw working on something he couldn't vocalize.

Diana barked a hollow laugh. "That's what they're feeling right now, I guess." She put her hands in her pockets, quite at home with such spacious amenities on the overcoat. It was so comfortable, her elbows drooping down around them, so contained, so protected, from the creeping fear that she had spoken too much, painted Kaoru the drug of the parasites, turning his world upside down so he could make a dangerous recalculation of which part of his equation was the cause, the effect. Who was the victim, really?

Without a word, Kaoru pushed off from the railway and shoved his hands back into his overcoat. He stepped past Diana and crossed the bridge back towards the host club.

"Don't you want to save Kyouya?"

That was all that she required to make him stop and she knew it. And she knew it would be cruel to force him to walk back up the bridge, and that she who should apologize should follow after him. So she waited.

There might have been a little bit of hate in Kaoru's eyes. "Kyouya's been dead for thirty-eight hours. Who the hell are you kidding with right now?"

What Diana had forgotten to prepare for was explaining the TM. She had already set herself up on a fragile ice floe of a melting relationship with this man. There was a pit sucking down the air in her lungs. If she told him about the time machine now, he was going to have a swing at her for sure.

"I have a time machine."

She felt the diamond of his ring enter the rim of her right cheek before she saw it. It was a bleeding ruby on his knuckles now. She was scrambling backwards on the ground, her too-long pant legs trailing and catching under her shoes. She couldn't get enough friction with the ground to get more than three feet away from him, so his hand was at her tie, hoisting her up again.

"You think you're going to fuck with me like this?" he shouted. "You really think so?"

She couldn't say anything, blubbering, words, they didn't work anymore, just sounds and crying and red tears on her face that burned like acid, glowed like fury. For a moment a confused thought about which of them was bleeding more—what did Kyouya even mean to him anyway? She didn't even know the guy, so of course that was a mistake, saying anything, saying all those things, when she didn't even know what the hell that she was talking about, but then he didn't know either.

This time the diamond didn't make contact with her skin, at least, but it no doubt left a black mark where it crashed into her ribs and a red blood trail across the shirt. She crumbled wondering if a rib could pop up through her neck and into her mouth and heaved, for there was nothing to vomit.

"Don't let me see your face again," she could hear him saying. "Or I'll give your other cheek a scar to match...and miss."

* * *

><p><em>But the mystery grows deeper yet! It was mentioned that the son of famed designer Hitachiin, Kaoru Hitachiin had made an unusual appearance in this exact restaurant. The other employees explained he was covering for his college friend, the manager. There might not be any falsity to this story, but that does not erase the fact that Mr. Hitachiin is also a close friend of Mr. Ootori from high school days. Witnesses in the restaurant were able to tell me that this man sat down to a conversation with the lady, and was seen passing her a card in the conversation, a card with the address to the host club he most likely intended to meet her in again. Prince Charming had just come to personally invite her to the ball.<em>

* * *

><p>She could see the receptionist ready to dial the authorities before she even stepped past the sliding doors. The image of her own reflection in those doors remained burned into her retinas and for a moment she couldn't help but agree that calling the police would be the right thing to do. The blonde wig was swinging over the backside of her head and her hair was piling out of the buns they were in, and with red streaks flooding down a disgusting purple swelling—her cheek—she couldn't even recognize if her face was that of a man or a woman. For some reason she still held the hat in her hands, which were red from trying to stem the blood. There were two other women who were being greeted by the newest face of Club Eden, and all three stopped to stare at the wreck that walked up to the receptionist desk.<p>

"I'm not insane," Diana said.

The receptionist promptly decided that she was insane.

"Please don't make the call yet." She wiped her snot on the sleeve of the host club uniform and hiccupped. "I just want to help people." That sounded strange. "But I need to talk to Hitachiin-san." Yep. She was outright crazy. "Please tell him I'm—" Her stomach grumbled. The receptionist flinched, still wide-eyed and holding the phone at her ear, her fingers twitching over the number pad. Diana could feel the hot tears crawling down her face again. "Please tell him I'm hungry and I'm serious about saving his friend, and," sobbing the last words, she said, "and he's going to spend the rest of his life thinking about me if he doesn't come back fast."

The host who had been greeting the two women had disappeared at some point, but on the women's faces was the expression of discovering piss in a Mountain Dew can. When she met their eyes, she felt it click inside her, something in her gut, something in her heart, something angry, something hateful, something disgusted by the way people could treat one another without knowing a stamp's worth of information about them. In that moment she couldn't think what she could hate more—those women, or Kaoru, herself—or the people on the bus—they were like that too, weren't they?

"You!" This time Kaoru had a bottle, and Diana stumbled backwards seeing something worse than cut diamond digging into her stomach instead.

"Hitachiin-san!" Two hosts wrestled to stop his arms. "Control yourself!" said one. "Everyone's watching!" The second finally managed to slip the bottle out of his hand.

"I told you not to let me see your _face_!"

"I'll give him back! I'll bring him back! Please—listen to me—!"

"Are you serious? _That _again? You really think you have a time machine, you stupid bitch!"

"Please, just hear me out—I can help you if you just hear me out!"

"All right." Everything stopped. Kaoru stopped struggling with the hosts and stepped back, his arms dropping to his sides and his voice even as a flat board. "All right, did you hear that? I'll listen to you. Come along, sweetheart, and let me hold you tonight," he said, arms out in the pose of a pending embrace. Someone said his name in warning but he kept talking. "We'll talk until I don't want to talk anymore and that's that. I hope you have a really good story to tell me. I hope you're like Scheherazade. Do you know of her—SHUT UP, YUKI-SAN!" Then he coughed, and then he smiled. "Come now, darling, come along, I won't hurt you, I promise. I swear. In fact!" He clapped his hand twice as he made his proclamation. "If I put so much as a mark on you, I will leave this club. You all can act as my witnesses? Yes? Good. So, then. Yukiko, darling, you can put the phone down. Everything's going to be okay."

Kaoru spoke with eyes fixed constant on Diana. He said it again. "Everything's going to be okay."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: It's been a long time since I seriously sat down to write, to chug out sixty straight pages of work, and it's been grating on my nerves when I knew the whole time there was a huge load of work I was putting off and would never get to but...going back to read the chapter three I had written a year ago and forgotten to put up back then, I forgot how much fun I was having writing that. Especially in the midst of another, much darker fiction, the absolutely bubbly nature of Diana Reed in her moment of innocence made me fall in love with her. I hadn't reread the first two chapters of this fiction at the time, so I didn't get that feel of "fake happiness" you get when you're writing and you know something bad's about to happen (or at least maybe I'm still too incompetent). I was completely in Diana's exuberant state of mind. I did get a peek at those chapters again by accident however, and realized the Diana you all met first and hopefully enjoyed is incredibly dark... No. Bitter. She's incredibly bitter. I've kept that in mind as I worked from that moment on, so there are four chapters after this that are ready to go at your command. You just need to tell me so first. XD  
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	5. Compassionate

**A quick shoutout to Queen Violet of the Underworld, Ohhh babyyy (lol), Sanityismyenemy3, round and round we go, wreakless, Lady Island Rose, and MeAFanfictionGirl. Thanks so much for taking the time to read this and for your kind of almost vocal support! :)  
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**I've blasted through the next few chapters, so even little things like grammar errors, confusing or run-on sentences (my weakness), misplaced antecedents, whatever-point them out please! Ha ha, it kinda bugs me...XD I am in fact a member of the Grammar Yakuza.  
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**Okay, then, a little more serious...  
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* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5: Compassionate<strong>

**"Wanna know the last thing I told Kyouya? Yeah. I do too." ~Kaoru**

* * *

><p><em>It all becomes clearer now. Seeing as all financial transactions in Club Eden are done in cash, it is no doubt that the club's Numero Uno intended on meeting her here to pay her an agreed installment of an as of yet undisclosed sum. Off hours relationships with customers is against the rules, and Hitachiin had made it clear that he would be taking this particular night off, so the other hosts unanimously expressed surprise in seeing him there that night when I finally arrived. They were shocked to see him escorting out a single lady in an outright run. Now don't you forget what I said in that last sentence.<em>

* * *

><p>"Well, then." Kaoru leaned back against the edge of the sink and dried his face in the towel. He paused wiping his hands in it next to look at her and smiled. "The first thing we need to do is..." He reached across the marble bar and grabbed the bottle he left next to the soap. "The first thing we need to do is clean you up." In one, swift motion, he put the towel against the mouth of the bottle, flipped the bottle so it could soak in the alcohol, and pressed the dabbed part against her cheek.<p>

She bit the inside of her cheeks and thought her teeth had gone clean through them. She thought she was tasting the blood from the scrape Kaoru gave her, then realized if that was true, her cheeks would have holes and she would be able to see the holes in the mirror when her eyes stopped watering. But there weren't any holes after Kaoru had run the damp towel over the rest of her face, drying her eyes and spreading the stench under her nostril.

"There you go," he said, holding her face with the towel still in one hand as he studied his work. His eyes widened for a moment. "I..."

Diana held her breath to keep from having to deal with the stench in his breath.

"I really took a chunk out of your face, didn't I?" whispered Kaoru.

"That. Was. Almost. My _eye_," Diana said through gritted teeth.

"And almost your other eye too if you kept talking." His voice was flat and even again.

He dropped her face and tossed the towel to the floor and paced along a series of seats in front of mirrors. The host club boys had personal makeup professionals, certainly, but some chose to do it themselves. A clean row of light bulbs stuck out along the wall above the mirrors, and the chairs swiveled at Kaoru's touch as he paced beside all of them. The staccato of the beat of the club downstairs permeated past the supposedly soundproofed walls of the room; Diana thought perhaps her diaphragm was jumping along with the beat—or at least something in her belly was. And it wasn't food.

"So tell me," he said at last. "How are you going to bring back my friend from the dead?" He stopped pacing and stood at the end of the row of swiveling chairs now, his reflection bouncing off of mirrors where the wall met in a corner so it seemed there were three Kaorus spinning three chairs as he spoke. "I'm sure he would be interested," he added with a short laugh. "What this would do to the profits of his industry!" He frowned at her for a moment. "You don't know him, do you? Ootori. Ootori! If you knew anything about Japan, you would know them. It's big enough to have its own yakuza. And my friend? The third and youngest son. Wait, wait—you have to hear this! You want to know what is ironic? This, this is ironic: when they took him away for his operation, they took him to his own hospital!"

Kaoru was caught by such a bout of laughter he collapsed against the seat and, giving up, slid into it and turned himself away from her, to face the mirror. Diana washed her face and hands, her eyes constantly on the mirrors above her sink, so that her reflection locked eyes with those of Kaoru's reflection on the other side of the room. Mirrors everywhere, this room, all four walls, and if they moved together properly they would have been able to look at any pair of walls to emulate the same behavior. Kaoru stopped laughing at last and leaned his elbows against the table littered with liquid foundations and concealers and powder brushes and lip glosses.

"A time machine, huh?"

Diana dried her hands on the towel he dropped, placed the towel atop the sink again, and pulled out the fake cell phone.

The door of the room opened, releasing the pounding beast of the beat of the club downstairs for a moment as one of the host boys Diana had never seen before entered the room. "Woh! Hitachiin-san! I heard you cancelled all your appointments!" He stopped short when he saw Diana, then broke out into a grin. "What is this? We're not making _that _a host, are we? Hey, move it, I need to use the washroom. Hitachiin-san, really, you're too much," he was saying as he vanished into the bathroom.

Kaoru mock-saluted him as he left a minute later, and the room refilled with silence.

"I'm not an addiction." He shook his head. "No. I'm not. That's not what Tamaki made us. That's not what the Host Club was about. We made people happy before, genuinely happy." Then he shook his head again. "No. I _wasn't_ an addiction, before. No, you're right. I _am _an addiction. I am." He stopped, opened his mouth a couple of times. Couldn't say it, whatever it was, until he met her eyes again. "I hate this place." He stopped. He breathed. He nodded. "I hate this place. This is...the top of the top. No. Almost the top. But it's not...it's not what Tamaki made. Why didn't I realize it before? It wasn't the host club—it had nothing to _do _with the host club, what Tamaki did. It was happiness." He shook his head in disbelief and wonder, sank back into his chair with a smile on his face. "Huh. Can you believe it now, Kyouya, I've come to the wrong place...at least one of us knew where we were going. So that's why...he stopped..."

He didn't look like he was going to skin a cat (or her, for that matter) anymore, so she took a few cautious steps towards his side of the room. "This," she said, indicating the fake cell phone she was holding. "I got it on Ebay. Cheap. And then I turned it on, activated it, a couple of minutes before the bus pulls around. It was all...completely an accident." She explained what she believed was a reversion point, the seven-day rule.

"You're going to go back to a couple of minutes before the bus comes and save Kyouya?"

"Yes."

"Did you see the reporters since yesterday?"

Diana bit her lip and shook her head. That was the original reason she had shown up at the club's doorstep after she had lost them in the train station. She needed hiding, for a little while, so Kaoru had dressed her as a host, found a woman who would be a potential customer—Ai Otsukaga—and promised two free bottles, which was in effect two reservations to himself at the club.

"All right then." Kaoru swiveled about in the chair to face her. "How may I help you?"

Diana opened her mouth a couple of times. She certainly was starting to get all too familiar with that pain in her throat.

Kaoru looked away. "I was going to say, I always wondered what that felt like. Swiveling in the chair and making that offer. Kyouya used to do that a lot, when he got an office." He tried to laugh, but it got stuck in his throat. "He was a cool guy. The cool type."

Diana pressed together her lips and breathed in through her nose, but only ended up sucking in whatever was collecting inside and coughing. "What type are _you _supposed to be?"

"Me? I'm the devil type. Or I used to be, with my twin brother. But I discovered I can't be a devil without him."

"What are you now?"

"Empathetic, or something like that."

Diana sniffed. "I need...I need time. A safe place to stay and hide, so I can gather more information on everything that's happened, that's going to happen, what the police find out from the investigation over the next six days...and...maybe a little something to eat, too."

"Yeah, you lost everything running in the station, right?"

Diana nodded. "I didn't run very much."

"Right..." Kaoru stood up. "Then you can use my apartment. It's not like I'm going to lose anything, letting you in for a week."

Diana breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you... Thank you so much..."

Kaoru shook his head. "Don't thank me. This is the kind of thing you'd hear my brother say instead but...I am doing this for completely selfish reasons, and I don't want you to forget it. You were right. If I didn't come back, I would have been thinking of you for the rest of my life."

* * *

><p><em>What a chase! Hongshu and I had already lost Wicked Cinderella once in the subways due to her cunning. She pretended to board a transit line, rushed into a different compartment and exited in the same station, leaving my poor companion and myself unknowingly outwitted and uselessly heading north. However, she'd also made her tragic blunder. She'd left her purse in the compartment in her mad dash out, so we had in our hands her wallet and her identity. Now we knew who she was, and it was no difficulty for the Japanese police to ask the American Embassy for more information about her. More on that later.<em>

* * *

><p>Diana's first thought when she awakened was she was late for school. Diana's second thought was she didn't recognize the t-shirt she had on. Diana's third thought was there was a Post-It note on her face.<p>

The Post-It note generally summed up to he was sleeping until four in the afternoon and mandated absolute silence, because hell would freeze over before he could skip a third unscheduled day of work and still maintain his job.

She shrugged.

His was a large apartment, not blatantly lavish like Ai Otsukaga's, but pleasantly spacious and filled with large windows that let in lots of light. It was barely eleven o'clock, so Diana thought it safe to snoop around a little bit after using her finger to rub toothpaste into her mouth for a makeshift brush. It was better than yesterday—when she didn't brush at all—so she wasn't as grossed out as she felt she should have been. She needed a toothbrush. Speaking of which, she also needed more undergarments. Those were all at home and these were...dirty. Her mind produced a defensive wall that prevented her from continuing along that line of thinking for the well-being of her psychological self.

Photos. Photos of Kaoru, his twin brother, and their mother, whom she found out later was a fashion designer. No wonder he always seemed well-dressed, whatever he was wearing. Photos of a group of his friends in Ouran uniforms. She frowned. The brown-haired, blue-eyed one looked like a girl. She put her hands on her hips and regarded the rest of the long wall, then turned her attention to the biggest TV screen she had ever encountered within a person's living quarters. She found a box collection of DVDs with titles like _Ouran High School Host Club: Jungle Pool SOS! _She cocked her brows and put them away immediately.

Her next venue for attack: the refrigerator. It was very depressing. That which was cooked was already rotten...or at least it did not look good for consumption. That which was not cooked was definitely rotten. She might as well have thrown the whole refrigerator away. The cabinets provided crackers and Oreos, which was just enough for Diana's diet.

Now then, to work.

Wait.

No laptop.

There was no computer that she had seen in the kitchen, or in the living room where she had slept in clean pajamas Kaoru had loaned her. Come to think of it, her Iphone was completely dead as well, since she didn't have a charger with her...which meant...all access to the interwebz was inside Kaoru's room.

Where Kaoru was sleeping.

Like a lion.

Diana breathed deep...

...and finally let out the stale air she had been holding in her lungs like a balloon. All right. Laptop acquired. On her knees in the gap between the sofa and the knee-height, glass coffee table, she flipped open the screen and did a double take. The login screen...was his brother...not wearing clothes... _Crap! There's no guest account!_

She shut the screen, trying to pull the brakes on the heart beating at the speed of a bullet train. She could hack it. But that required having to potentially stare at the picture too. No. She couldn't... She couldn't do that. Well. Maybe for a few seconds. There were simply a couple of things one always had to try before taking the hammer to the nail...or wrecking ball to it. She went back to the DVD set to check the name of his brother. _Hmm._

She flipped open the screen again, scrunched shut her eyes and typed in._ H1karu._ Nope. _h1k ru_? Nope. Well. After a third attempt, the computer may or may not lock down, so she had better be really confident. Or just...wait five minutes. _Hmm. _She typed in her third guess, and smiled.

Okay, first things first. Emails.

She wrote something very lengthy to her father and something two lines long to her mom, sighed reading Tsunade's worried interrogation, and panicked when she saw her Artificial Intelligence professor's note regarding her missing Battleship assignment. _Oh yeah. I have to do that before going to the birthday party. _Her eye twitched. She was getting used to the idea of a time machine.

She had already gone through the websites of the top six news stations of Japan at the library yesterday, and there wasn't much in the way of new developments. It was still Who-Got-Hurt news and Our-Hearts-Go-Out-To-You news and a statement from the US Secretary of State offering aid in investigation against any and all terrorist attacks. But there was no substantial Who-Dunnit news yet, and in any case, with the public in a general state of panic, the police would put up anyone even slightly defamed in a broadcaster's face just to settle people down and get the media to let them work. Finding the real cause might be slow work, but the public isn't always patient enough, so give the journalists something to jabber about while law enforcement is on the case, and then, when it's died down, release the real information and the framed S.O.B. with apologies and remind the nation, "Hey, at least now we can breathe a sigh of relief." Diana chuckled quietly to herself as she looked out his window into the windows of someone else's empty apartment across the street. That's just how it always is, isn't it?

In which case...Diana stood up again and stretched as much as she could without bothering her knee or inflaming her ribs where Kaoru had punched her the night before. That's right, she forgot to put on the Bengay this morning. It had crossed her mind that she should go to the hospital—"Yeah," Kaoru stated flatly on the train, "like the one that Kyouya owns six miles from here? Want to get off now and catch the Yamanote instead?"—but then she thought of how some boys just got into fight after fight after fight on the streets and just sucked it up. Right. She would need a lot of practice sucking it up given the way she bawled her eyes (and snot) out after Kaoru had left her on the bridge. In any case, she couldn't possibly go to a hospital without being IDed, and come to think of it, she should have cancelled her two credit cards by now but she didn't have time before and all her information was in her laptop anyway.

_No! I can't live life like I'm going to have a second chance! _After all, what were the chances that the time machine might glitch or break and wouldn't be able to take her back into the past? Whether it was small or big, _she_ didn't know. Which meant she needed to get to canceling her credit cards right away. And wait. Why couldn't she just call the police on the two reporters? She could explain she had gone into hiding since the accident because those two stalkers were convinced they would land her as their jackpot. She was panicked. She got scared. It might even give her extra time on that battleship project. All she had to do was—well, it's not like the police would be able to even find anything to connect her to causing the explosion because there _was none_. So even if they investigated her, didn't it mean she was completely cleared? She could go home back to her normal lifestyle? If need be, the police would just arrest that 'crazed' reporter, right?

This should have made her happy, but there was something inherently wrong that she couldn't put her finger on.

_Ding dong. _She stopped breathing. Whatever it was that was bothering her was flooded out and forgotten. It was the reporter. How the hell could he have found her already? She was the in apartment of a man she had not known two days ago—there wasn't a single person in the city besides him and Ai Otsukaga who could possibly let them know she was here! Ai. It must have been her. That woman had been disdainful of her from the moment Kaoru had told her to hide Diana for him. As soon as Kaoru had gone, Ai had turned to her and looked her up and down and smirked as she took Diana's arm without being offered it and slid her body up to it. "You really are a pitiful thing, aren't you? So what are you, his low-down concubine? You know he's only got about a hundred other women and you just, set on down on that little rump of yours and just—" Ai was drunk at the time, but Diana couldn't help wanting to grab the lighter from the hand of the old man they were walking past at that time, just grab the lighter and set the woman's dress on fire and then light the old man's cigarette with "sumimasen" and a smile.

There was a mild curse from Kaoru's room and his door slammed open. He stumbled out with no shirt and bedhead and growled, "Dammit, who did _all _the locks on this thing?" at the front door. The door opened to a tall man with a face chiseled like alabaster stone, the stock of an inverted triangle, and patient eyes that moved directly from Kaoru to her.

"Sorry, Mori-san, I forgo—" And then Kaoru remembered why he put all the locks on the door last night. "Wait! No! It's not what you think!"

Diana couldn't blame Mori-san for thinking whatever he might have been thinking, discovering Kaoru with no shirt on and a woman in the living room wearing his clothes. She had once seen an anime and expected from what she had observed that Japanese girls would probably be jumping up and down to convince the man to think otherwise, but she wasn't bothered by the connection since Kaoru was the only one convinced he was at some higher level than her. He might have been a host and son of a famed designer, but of what she'd seen of him, he could be arrogant, vulgar, careless, violent, insensitive, and a spoiled brat. Maybe he should have been _apologizing _for giving the impression that he could possibly be connected to _her_. Well, she didn't care much; they were all strangers that would pass through her life on her way to getting that bus explosion sorted out, so it didn't truly matter what they thought right now, right?

_Again, with that whole expecting to do it over again...stop thinking like that, me!_

The man put a hand on Kaoru's shoulder and gently pushed him aside as he entered the apartment and set down four plastic bags atop the counter before making his way to her.

"Takashi Morinozuka, right?" Diana stepped forward and shook his hand. "Reed, Diana. I'm not a creeper; I noticed it on his host club DVDs."

"How are you not a creeper if you were going through my—_what are you doing with my laptop!_"

"Because I needed to do research to keep on top of everything. That's the whole reason you brought me here, remember? But I was going to ask..." She smiled at Mori-san, if only to see Kaoru blow steam out of his ears. "Why is there a picture of your naked brother and why is your password 'password'?"

Mori-san looked at Kaoru. "You made your password 'password'? Wasn't that the first thing Kyouya—"

And the flame of pretend cheer was sucked out of its wick by a black hole of despair in a second.

"How is..." Kaoru put a hand on the back of a chair to support himself. "How is Tamaki? And Haruhi? And Hunny?"

Mori pulled out the chair at the dining table that Kaoru had been holding onto and with a nod motioned for Kaoru to sit down, then pulled out another chair. Diana shook her head, feeling guilty for a moment that she would intrude on such a personal moment, but consoled herself by busying herself with shelving the groceries Mori seemed to have brought for Kaoru into the refrigerator...and removing whatever strange fungal material there appeared to be out.

"Thanks," Kaoru muttered unconsciously as Mori sat down across from him, though to whom his thanks were to be delegated to was up in the air.

"Kaoru," Mori said. "Come back to us."

Kaoru said nothing. Diana considered where to put the potatoes, since those didn't go into the refrigerator.

"Now is your chance, Kaoru," Mori continued. "Haruhi and Tamaki's wedding is in less than a week, and even if we both know Hikaru is not coming back, at least you can. I know Kyouya didn't say anything about it, but did you really think he was all right with the way we splintered over the last four years? Now we won't even have Kyouya there."

Kaoru was grinding his teeth, twirling a salt shaker in his hands. In the moment Diana turned back to face them and ask if perhaps she should prepare something, his eyes met hers and held.

"Wanna know the last thing I told Kyouya?" said Kaoru. He answered the silence he received with: "Yeah. I do too."

Diana decided to simply take the initiative and cook something, rummaged inside the cabinet next to the refrigerator where she had found a place to put the potatoes.

"I saw him," Kaoru was saying, now his voice so soft she couldn't hear him over the plastic bag with the onions. It must have been a time and place or something, because he finished with "said nothing to each other."

Whatever Mori said in response was lost to her in the procuring of a frying pan, a knife, metal spoons and wooden spoons, a bowl, some eggs, salt, vinegar.

"They don't know what happened, Kaoru," Mori continued, and Kaoru went back to fiddling the salt shaker. "Tamaki and Haruhi and Hunny, they don't know, and they never have to find out. You can still go back."

Kaoru gave a short burst of bitter laughter and tilted his chair onto its back chair legs. "Oh yeah? You think _I _could stand to go back? You think I'm going to be able to look Haruhi, or Tamaki in the eyes and say, 'Congratulations, have a happy life'? Well, yeah. Maybe I can. I'm a pretty good liar, aren't I? But then what? Then what, when Haruhi calls me for the baby shower? And then maybe later on, a different phone call, or a group dinner out, she'll plead—no, she wouldn't plead, she's too good for that... No, she'll drop that casual note, 'I sure wish Hikaru would come back' and then what do I do?"

"All wounds heal with time, Kaoru."

"No. No, they don't. Some wounds don't heal. Some wounds, they fester, they become infected, they become diseased, and then they kill. Kyouya explained that to us, right, woman has successful cancer operation, dies of infection."

"That's not a fair analogy—"

"Like hell it isn't! What's not fair about it? Tch! Don't worry, I won't go off on the whole 'Life's not fair' rant. I can leave that to my brother. I'm not that stupid. Hey. What are you getting so happy with my kitchen for?"

Diana batted away his new line of attack with a shrug. "Shut up. I'm making lunch for you, idiot."

"Oh yeah. I know what American cuisine's like. I'm reaaaaally looking forward to it."

"I eat the same things you do on a daily basis, retard. Stop judging me just because I'm white. Bloody Jap."

"What was that?"

"In any case, it looks like the spices Mori brought are for Indian cuisine. Bet I can do it better than you. Do you have an Iphone charger I could use? I'll find a recipe online, but I got no juice on it."

"Stop making yourself at home with me!"

"Mori-san, is he always this God-awful?"

"He didn't used to be."

That shut Kaoru down like a slap in the face.

Mori smiled and shook his head. "Kaoru was the most compassionate member of the host club seven years ago. Don't judge him by what you see now; there's a lot you might miss about him if you do."

Diana used the knife to gather the sliced onions and slide them into the pot and added three tablespoons of canola oil, biting her lip. _If there's a man that could make a man cry, that one's it. _

"People change," came Kaoru's choked voice over her shoulder.

"And it is always within a person's ability to change for the better. Change is a choice. To not change is also a choice."

There was a shuffling behind her.

"Mori-san!" Diana dropped the knife onto the cutting board and washed her hands. "You're not leaving already!"

Mori smiled at her and put his shoes on again. "I have to take a friend of mine to the dentist."

Kaoru barked a laugh. "See you, Mori."

"Yeah." And then with great emphasis, "Soon."

Diana frowned as she locked all the locks on the door. When she walked back in, she found Kaoru opening the door to his room.

"Not eating?"

"No. I'm going back to sleep." But he hesitated.

"That man. He didn't say a thing about us. He didn't even look like he needed to say a thing."

"That's just how he is. That's why he's the only man I can still stand to see." Kaoru was quiet for so long Diana started to walk away. "He doesn't judge. He just listens, he understands...and then he supports. Mori in a nutshell."

Diana was starting to feel awkward with all the heavy talk about people she didn't know about. She'd like to know about Mori, though. "Sweet dreams," she said, then winced.

Kaoru gave her a look. "Yeah, bull shit." Slammed the door shut.

Diana sighed, sat back down to the laptop with her head in her hands. She heard the door slide open again, and saw Kaoru's arms come into her peripheral view. He dropped a phone charger into her lap, collected his laptop and whisked it away.

"COMPASSIONATE MY ASS!"

"DAMN RIGHT."

_SLAM._

* * *

><p><strong>AN: **

**So. Kaoru. I am honestly concerned you might think him "out of character." Keep reading ;) But Mori-how'd I do with that? I wasn't much a fan of him before, but writing him in-and boy was he a surprise to me-I realized when it comes to partner-of-life qualities-boyfriend, husband, father-this is the guy who tops all them all. ...You can let me know if you think different XD and we'll see what happens. I don't mind a little friendly debate ;).**

**In any case, I hope you enjoyed this chapter too. I know I advertised this story as KyouyaxOC, and it certainly hasn't changed in that regards, but I had no idea I wasn't going straight to the "save Kyouya and do stuff" part right away. That was in fact my intention last year. In other words, this Kaoru arc didn't exist last year. So I'm sorry for Kyouya fans at the moment, but believe me, since I'm a Kyouya fan, everything I do is only set up to make the future even better. ;) I got a few lesson of gut instinct with this story, whether it was to decide to go ahead with this arc or whether it was some of the scenes in chapters four through eight that I've honestly done five times now. It sure helps that my gut's constantly telling me I'm doing it wrong until I get it right...even if it is discouraging enough to make me stop writing for a day...but maybe that's a good thing. Then I'm not wasting my time doing it wrong and when I get back to it, I'm inexplicably somehow on the right track. So let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, suggestions for what you wanna see later, or—please please please, critique, critique, critique, and I'll put up another chapter soon. :)**


	6. Cheeseburger

**Chapter 6: Cheeseburger**

**"Pchoo!"**

* * *

><p>"And there we have it, the glorious Host King, down after a hard night's work." It was Tuesday morning, she had three days to go, and the dinner she had left for him she saw was untouched. "Disgusting," she muttered at the mass of sweat, alcohol, perfume, B.O. and hairspray. She closed his door, the laptop tucked under her arm.<p>

Today, there was progress, or at least which poor bastards would be used as scapegoats were beginning to surface. She burst out laughing at Iran's quick finger pointing at Israel. They probably did that for every bus explosion, carjacking, plane crash, suicide bombing, train derailment and overdue shipments of child slaves. Yes. It was obvious. Israel was behind the bus bombing. There was also talk of the heated rivalries—that was the US term for it—between China, Korea and Japan.

At the moment Japan was going to be fixated on a certain Mitsuo Kubo. Expelled from two high schools, now a nobody on the streets, he had apparently made some remarks at a gas station regarding how to create a bus explosion. Black hair, black eyes, dead face. _Right... _There were no connections to be made with Aum Shinrikyo, which had led the Sarin gas attacks in Matsumoto in 1994, and then nine months later on the Tokyo subway lines in 1995. There had been some general grumble whether it was a similar case to the 1985 Narita International Airport bombing. An Indian flight carrier was targeted by some Sikh extremist organization. However, because they did not realize Japan did not use daylight savings time, the bomb exploded in the process of being transported by baggage handlers an hour earlier than intended. She felt terrible for doing so, but she couldn't help laughing out loud at that bit of trivia.

_Trivia? _She stopped laughing. Is that how she was seeing everything right now, a game? It was starting to become more and more...away from her. More and more unreal. A faintly amusing, enthralling, terrifying aspect of a universe of which she was an outsider and a spectator. Like sky-diving, finger constantly on the trigger that would release the parachute. A safety net at her command. Like she had the key to make everything right, and she only needed to learn how to use it. _Only_?

Her eyes caught upon a particular headline. Memorial service, Wednesday afternoon. Fine. There couldn't be a better way to drum into her just how real the situation was. But until then...all she could do was watch...and wait. It was getting harder now, sitting, watching, waiting, because she was running out of things to research. Running out of things to do. So while the world watched the amazingly clean confessions of the remorseless Mitsuo Kubo, Diana waited.

* * *

><p>Wednesday. Wednesday. Waiting Wednesday. Waitless Wednesday. Weightless Wednesday. Waving Wednesday. Warning Wednesday. Wacky Wednesday.<p>

It was Wednesday.

It was Wednesday, and Diana was starting to get nervous. It was Wednesday, and Diana was starting to get restless. It was Wednesday, and Diana was starting to get anxious. She couldn't handle it. She had fallen asleep after leaving out a late night dinner for Kaoru and awoken before the crack of dawn and she couldn't handle it anymore. How could this be all? How could this be all she could be doing?

There was more she could be doing. She didn't know where Kaoru's laptop was anymore—_damn me for not putting it back under his pillow before passing out!—_but she had found a new line of attack for investigating barring actually putting herself out into the field. (She couldn't do that yet.) And she had been in this apartment since Sunday night. Over 72 hours. She was about to go insane if she didn't get some fresh air soon...but it was still dark.

She took out her Iphone. There might have been more. Maybe the reporter was wrong. Maybe Kyouya wasn't the target. Maybe there was somebody on the bus. Of course, that was ridiculous. Why would anyone targeting somebody in a limousine put a bomb on the bottom of a bus? There were _so _many things that could go wrong. Traffic. Road construction. An old lady taking her sweet time crossing the road. Why in the world would anyone try to line up a timed bomb with the coincidence of a shared lane with a particular limo? What if it was the wrong limo?

So. Who were all the people on the bus? There were trace names littered throughout the first dozens of news articles, from breakthrough times, but they were hard to distinguish from quoted witnesses.

Dave Cappel. 29. American tourist. Single dad, vacationing with his three beloved daughters. Owns a small shoe polish business.

No.

Light Yagami. Police officer. Son of a police officer. ...Kind of...gorgeous.

Probably not.

...Hopefully not.

Bakura Limey. Japanese born, British citizen. High school student. Likes card games?

Nu-uh.

Rivalz Cardemonde. Another student, this one attending the obscenely rich Ashford Academy.

Edward Cullen.

Diana blinked a couple of times, sighed happily, and continued along.

There was also someone now unfortunately heralded as Super Saiyan Goku. His face melted, but his cosplay didn't...

She sighed, then jumped out of her seat. It was nine. It was bright outside. Okay, not bright. It was cloudy, and rainy, and kind of gross, but gosh darn it she was going outside in Kaoru's pajamas. _Give me liberty, or give me LIBERTY!_

* * *

><p>She was locked out.<p>

Wow, she was stupid.

"HITACHIIN-SAAAAAAN!"

It was no use. She leaned her head against the door, starting to feel awfully sorry for herself. How long was she going to be here? He didn't wake until seven sometimes, sometimes eight if he was fine with the stress of 'almost-late'.

Wait. He answered Mori's call at the doorbell within seconds.

Soooooo...

_Dingdingdingdingdingdingding dingdingding—_

"Look, Haruhi! It's an American!"

—_dingdingding...dingding...ding..._

Diana rolled her eyes at the blonde man and the woman beside him and froze. _Haruhi._

"Uh, sorry about that," the woman said with a quiet laugh. She was pocketing car keys into the jacket of her pine business suit as she approached. "He's just very excited to see an old friend of ours. He's been like this the whole morning. And I guess it looks like our old friend is your new friend, huh?" She smiled.

"Wait," said Diana. "What does he mean '_It's an American_'?"

"That's an easy question!" said Haruhi's companion with a wide grin and much fanfare. "The only people I've ever seen do that at a doorbell aaaaare...may I have a drumroll, Haruhi? ...Fine. _A-MEEEEEEEH-RI-CAAAAAAAANS!_ Otherwise I would have asked if you were French."

"Tamaki, you have to be quieter in the hallways."

"Oops. Sorry."

"What the fuck are you—" Kaoru stood at his door with the look of a deer in the headlights.

"Uh," Diana's mind went completely blank. Taking a page from Tamaki's sense of drama, she flung out her arms and said, "Surpriiiiiiiiiiiiiiise!"

"How did you find—?"

"At laaaaaaaaaaaaast!" Tamaki took a hold of him by the collar of his host club shirt from the night before and pulled the man clean off his feet.

"Tamaki!" Haruhi yelled.

"I just want to know something, Kaoru," Tamaki said, glaring into Kaoru's face. "Where...were you...at Kyouya's funeral yesterday?"

_Kyouya's funeral? _That's right. When she searched his room for the laptop, she didn't recall smelling perfume on his anywhere. He didn't go to the club last night.

"I was behind you," Kaoru answered, his face blank. "Came after you, left before you. Done?"

Tamaki's expression lightened somewhat. "Nope."

"Tamaki, put Kaoru down!"

"How dare you, Kaoru," Tamaki continued, this time abiding Haruhi's protests and part-dropping, part-throwing Kaoru back into the entry hallway of his own apartment, "how dare you even _ask_ how we found you? You think we didn't know where you were this whole time? Did you think _Kyouya_ didn't know where you were these last four years? What, did you think you'd effectively 'disappeared' out of our lives? Because if you did, then I'll have you know you're mistaken. And that's why... That's why I came down here to tell you what colors my best man is going to wear to my wedding!"

Kaoru's eyes grew wide. "What?"

Diana couldn't believe it. It seemed suddenly the blonde man was floating past Kaoru into the living room, where he did a full circle around the couches and the coffee table as he explained. "Mother has devised a _muy_ elaborate wedding—"

("Tamaki, you don't speak Spanish," Haruhi interjected wearily.)

"—and we're having the best man and all the groom's buddies and all of the bridesmaids align in a singular color scheme that simply _glows _of the theme of unity! And I can't have you messing it up, Kaoru! Because if you do, then that's going to upset my mother and—" Tamaki froze where he stood, and once more his voice dropped to one oozing with danger. "I can't have you upsetting my mother." He clapped his hand. "And so! All of the important details I've written out in the card in this envelope, and hey! It looks like we'll have one more guest, Haruhi! Kaoru, bring your girlfriend too!"

He was still too stunned to formulate a response beyond a bland "She's not my girlfriend."

Tamaki and Haruhi stared at him with plastic smiles.

"Ha ha." Diana smiled at Haruhi, trying to cover the desperation with which she tried to restore the flamboyant, explosive joy Tamaki had recently unleashed into the room with his carrying voice and expansive gestures. "Heeeeee's...been saying that for a while now."

Haruhi laughed. "Well then, Kaoru, we'll see you on Saturday. Oh, I didn't get your name."

"Reed. Diana."

"I'll see you there too, Diana."

Tamaki pulled Kaoru off the floor with a wink. "Remember, screwing up my wedding now has gi-_gan-_tic consequences!" Just as he followed his fiancée out the door, he turned once more to face Kaoru and "Pchoo!" shot him with a finger gun. "Buh-bye now!"

And so it goes.

* * *

><p>"So, what have you <em>done <em>so far?" Kaoru had poured himself a glass of milk and stood at the counter twirling the glass with the tips of his fingers.

She wasn't going to take it. This time, Kaoru wasn't going to win. She would speak softly. She would...that's right, maintain her cool. He'll go off screaming because he'll see it's not working, egging her on, but she will keep giving it right back to him. Smooth, soft, controlled. Mori style. Super effective.

"I compiled a four page document consisting of notes from the news reports and a seventeen page document on terrorism in Japan and bus explosions. That is what I know now."

"But what has that actually _changed_?"

"It's still research. I'm waiting out for three more days to make sure I don't miss anything else that might happen."

"Waiting? _That's _what you've been doing? Just sitting in my apartment, fiddling on my computer, and _waiting_?"

"Waiting is not the same as doing nothing. Do you think it's easy to just sit tight right here? I could be out there talking to the victims or...something! Finding out what information the police and the detectives have themselves or—"

"Tch, I can't believe I fooled myself into thinking—"

She knew she should have kept her mouth shut, but she had to say it. "You're cranky. Go back to sleep." And then she realized she had just chosen the surest route to him _not _going back to sleep. He disappeared into his room. She shrugged. Strange. She didn't _feel _like she won. Something was wrong.

She sat at the laptop again, opened her email account. There was a pile at her side, a pine green T-shirt and jeans. Kaoru had put his hands together in the gesture of prayer. "Please," he said softly. "Here is a change of clothes for you to wear outside. Take this, and all of this cash, and while the morning still shines bright..."

"Hmmmm." She looked back at the monitor. "Let me just make sure this is the most updated version...okay."

She pocketed her cell phone and the TM and the (generous) wad of cash in the pockets of his jeans and stepped out of the door, this time to be locked out perhaps forever. "Hey, when it's all done and over with..." The door behind her was already closed. She crossed her arms and muttered under her breath. Rang the doorbell once. Twice. Three times. "I know you're still there; I didn't hear a single lock behind me. So listen carefully: by the time this is over, you won't remember you'd ever met me. Do you want me to make Tamaki make you his best man again?"

It was so quiet for so long she heard her stomach growling. Grumbling in irritation, she started to make her way to the nearest McDonald's. Waiting for red light so she could cross. Yawn. Run fingers through her hair, which had never been this soft before—_wait, what shampoo was he using again? _Yeah, the next street would make it easier to get a cab.

"It's _Junes_." Pronounced Joo-ness. She asked her question out loud?

Diana shifted her weight from right to left and glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, Kaoru was a walking minibar, complete with untucked shirt, tie undone, bird-nest bed-hair, alcohol breath and—she cringed—flip flops on his socks. _Junes. Good shampoo. _She curled some locks of her neck-length hair and started to hurry across the street in the seven seconds remaining before the DON'T WALK sign could start flashing.

She kept pretending to walk with a purpose—well, she had one, it was a cheeseburger, and the nearest McDonald was just six blocks away. Seeing a bridge, she stopped at its crest and turned on him. "_What?_" Maybe this time, she could punch him instead. Once at his left cheek. And then at his right cheek. And, as fate would have it, miss by an inch upwards both times. Yes.

"I might as well make sure you return safely."

_Mmhmm. _"Actually, I think most everybody would think _you're_ the threat to me if they see you hanging around me looking like that." She leaned against a brick wall that contained a sidewalk garden for the megamall complex they were walking past. "Unless you're going to go back and get changed..."

Kaoru shrugged. "Okay." He started to walk back. "Aren't you coming?"

"I've been stuck inside for over 72 hours. I think I'll stay right here."

"Fine. Just give me your phone number first."

Diana hesitated. Now that she thought about it, it was completely absurd that they hadn't done this earlier, but... "Here."

Kaoru squinted at the screen of the TM, took down the number and headed back. She saw the looks of the passersby and flushed. She didn't want to be seen with a man who looked like that. Maybe it was just her perception from the way he dressed, but it seemed to her he was even dragging his feet as he faded into the crowd. The only thing he needed to do now was to start wobbling his way across the street. That'll complete his image.

She sprang off the ledge and started walking. _Good riddance._

* * *

><p>The digestion process of the Beikoku CheeseBurger Deluxe started when Diana was the fourth person in line. It was love at first sight. She devoured its fat, pulpy, meat and the almost dripping cheese first, then a flirting glance at the exposed leaf of lettuce and a skimming of the cold ketchup with her lips—in her head. The seduction had taken its toll: the uncontrollably fast peeling of the wrapping, undressing said burger down to its essence and glory, a short romance with her nose in the bun, a quivering intake of fat and grease, and her mouth was ready for it, watering so much it was like the enzymes on her tongue were breaking themselves down in frenzy. After she enclosed it behind her teeth, the enzymes would escort American splendor down her esophagus, where the muscles would work so hard to welcome it down her throat and into her stomach that she could have been eating upside down if she wanted. And then when it entered the stomach, she frowned. She had expected a moment of bliss and patriotism, but she was only left with a bad taste in her mouth. Not even <em>juicy, red tomato!<em>, _crunchy-crunchy lettuce!_, or _super melty cheese!_ could leave an aftertaste long enough to divert the bitterness of the nothing her work had amounted to. Not even the _sizzle-sizzle bacon _ or _filling quarter pounder _could erase how empty it seemed the prospects of a better here and now.

Her shoes scuffed against the sidewalk, which she traversed at the extreme opposite side from the road, not even yielding to a woman with two kids in a stroller. Her nerves were settled for the moment: she handled the burger wrapping unnecessarily loudly and the chewed widely for the sake of not letting in the vibrating constant of car exhausts on the streets into her ears and body and heart. She was halfway to tearing up the wrapping when she was done with the burger and stuffing it into her ears so she wouldn't have to hear the sudden squeals of buses turning, but she wanted to know where they were so she could keep as far from them as possible until she could get into a subway station. There was another sound she couldn't get out of her ears as well, but it swiftly became part of the background.

"Excuse me, madam," said a businessman she had been trailing for some time now. "I think that's your cell phone."

"Uh...what?"

He wasn't exactly wrong. It was the TM that had been ringing. Seven missed calls, four messages, in the last half hour. _Huh. Must be Kaoru._ So it did work like a cell phone.

She thanked the man for pointing it out and flipped shut the fake cell phone again, putting it on mute. She had no need for him anymore. It was generous of him to allow her to hide in the apartment, but there was little he contributed to her efforts and even went so far as to demand the saving of one particular victim of the explosion with no word and perhaps no consideration of all the others. Furthermore, he slowed her down by making it difficult for her to have easy access to information by taking away his laptop but...well, information wasn't coming out fast, so at least that was not a serious concern. She had work to do, and she couldn't do that with such an impulsive...well, she did not know what to refer to him as in relation to herself. Not friend, not colleague, and if everything turned out according to her highest hopes, not even acquaintances. Kyouya would be saved and heading on to wherever that limo was taking him, sharing the same space as her for the length of a single red light, and Kaoru—she didn't even remember where exactly she had found that Starbucks and she wasn't particularly interested in finding out.

She sighed and checked the signs for an indication of her location. _Cress Avenue. _Cress Avenue! In one direction or another was the site of the explosion, if she only chose to follow it down the line. Her lungs were caving in. When it came time to push the button and start it all over again, would she do it?

Her phone was going off again. _Didn't I just mute it? _An alarm on her cell phone. It told her it was already three in the afternoon, and the memorial service was starting in fifty minutes.

* * *

><p>"Is <em>this<em> part of what you call work?" Kaoru's hands felt like vice grips getting tighter upon her shoulders.

It was just a fence. The memorial service, that is. But the fence was now lined with the faces of the now sixteen dead (in the hospital), staring back at the hundred or so who had come with flowers and candles and dashed dreams and prayers and hopes they'd forgotten to express before at a time when the dead were once the living.

"H-How did you—" Diana couldn't see him through her tears, but that tone of voice was unmistakable. He'd run a Kleenex over her eyes already, so rough she thought at first he had come to poke her eyes out in revenge, and then she saw the angry looks.

"You left your email logged in, so I saw this on the calendar," Kaoru explained, handing her another tissue from the mini pack he was returning to his pocket. "What are you doing here?" His voice was steadily climbing. "You think sitting here and crying is going to bring them back, Diana?"

"Kaoru, stop."

"You think you're doing anything for them by breaking your heart and crying your eyes out? What are you, some kind of masochist, or are you deluding yourself to have such a big heart because you can weep for a bunch of strangers?"

"_KAORU_!"

The world had stopped talking and the cars fell into silence. Kaoru's voice continued echoing, having paved itself the way. "This is why I hate funerals. It takes a dead person to reunite a family and then all we ever talk about it regret. If everyone knows we're all going to die at some point, why do they do the kinds of things they know they'll one day regret?"

He clamped his hand about her wrist and started walking. "We're leaving now, to do something more productive."

* * *

><p>Somewhere along the way, Kaoru had realized she couldn't stand to travel by road, so he had wordlessly led her to the train station and brought her back home. His home.<p>

They stood in the train even though there were some scattered seats available, because he would never let go of her wrist.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So. I didn't realize Diana would be meeting Mori-senpai, and I didn't realize Tamaki and Haruhi would bust in outta nowhere, and if it didn't give everything away, the quote I would have chosen at the top would have been: "Look, Haruhi, it's an American!" XD The surprises this story's had for me as it continued writing itself... In any case, there are more surprises awaiting in the next chapter. Believe it! There's a reason why it's called "Confession," and I bet you can't guess it, buuuuut, if anyone does care to guess, the closest guesser will be featured in some future chapter of mine XD **


	7. Confession

**Chapter 7: Confession **

****"I have hygiene. Why are you impressed by this?"****

* * *

><p>The thing about half the locks Kaoru had for some reason stationed upon the door was, they were only lockable from the inside. Once Kaoru left and was unable to lock those, it would certainly have made it easier for the reporter to get inside, sit on the perpendicular part of the L-shaped sofa, and loom over Diana's head with an arrest warrant in hand. But since Diana was still in denial about it:<p>

"H...Hitachiin-san?"

She couldn't even hear him breathing. "Yes."

Diana felt her spirit fall back into her body in relief. _Wow, I so nearly gave up my ghost already... _It was 4:49 a.m., and she could see nothing of him except the silhouette in varying degrees of darkness and a bit of his hair lit by the weak rays of the digital clock of his DVD player. He smelled distinctly of lavender and melon, amongst other fanciful perfumes whose names had nothing to do with origin or color.

"Did you take a bath yet?" For the sake of saying _something_.

Pause. "No. I must be pretty disgusting."

Diana frowned. "Did you fall asleep like that?"

Pause. "No. I had a lot to think about."

She could hear the clock ticking from Kaoru's room. She had never heard it before, only the microwave and refrigerator running and sometimes Kaoru's VCR would turn itself on to...do something. Rewinding a phantom VHS. Scared the crap out of her the second night. Would have scared the crap out of her the first night if she hadn't passed out from sheer exhaustion. "You should...go take a bath, think in the shower, and then sleep so you can think tomorrow."

"I should." But he didn't move.

He was quiet again for so long she was on the brink of sleep when he said it. "It was supposed to be Kyouya's place."

"…mm?"

"Tamaki's best man."

"...mm."

"Don't let it happen this way."

"...mm?"

"I can't let it happen this way. Not as a replacement, not as a second choice, not as a desperate move... Make Kyouya make me the best man. Then I'll know a miracle."

"...mm." There was something else she wanted to say to that, but she forgot.

* * *

><p><em>But how, might you ask, did she manage to evade us a second time? I will have you know I myself could not help but collapse laughing when I realized how we'd been duped. Hongshu and I followed this mysterious woman's footsteps into the night, asking all to help us find something blue-eyed, something 5'6", something in a navy blouse and a black skirt, and in red shoes with both heels whapped off. Foreigners are not difficult to track, even in Tokyo.<em>

* * *

><p>Mitsuo Kubo could be found in the Fuchu area of Tokyo, known for the largest prison in Japan. Within the fortified complex, Japanese and foreign inmates were maintained for sentences smaller than a decade for crimes that primarily dealt with lighter offenses: repeat substance abuse or the like. There were no women-only transits to it as far as Diana could tell, so she ran the risk of getting groped in overcrowded trains during rush hour because some perverts thought they could get away with it, her being some innocent foreigner and all. There couldn't be a more vulnerable type of person in Japan than female outsiders.<p>

Diana turned down the volume on the TV so she could think properly. She had turned it on in the first place to provide some background noise that might cover up the fact that she was alone in Kaoru's apartment on a morning. Thursday morning. Less than 48 hours remained for anything else that could possibly go wrong _to _go wrong so that she had a better understanding of everything she had to fix. She didn't know when exactly the police had apprehended Kubo, but if she wanted to learn anything about his involvement or lack thereof, she guessed she would have to encounter the man by Tuesday…and then she had to disengage herself without getting caught or trailed by the police afterwards.

In any case, she didn't know what she'd say to him. The only interrogation technique she knew of was ramming the questionable up the wall and punching him in the face, a la The Dark Knight, but the only thing that did for the Batman was get his girlfriend killed and the other guy burned and deranged. And what did it matter anyway? She wasn't convinced she could ram a man up a wall if she couldn't do fifteen consecutive pushups. Or even eleven. Or seven.

_Ding. _

She jumped to her feet. There were only two possibilities. It was either Kaoru or it wasn't. If she looked through the door to find Kaoru, she would let him in. If it wasn't Kaoru, then obviously all she'd see was blackness—blackness because she was unknowingly looking into the barrel of a some S.O.B.'s revolver and maybe she'd better be holding on to the TM just in case. And if she managed to get away from the door without getting the apartment redecorated with bits of brain and pieces of cranium, well then, she'd be squatting in the slip of space between the coffee table and the sofa, unable to breathe for the rest of the day.

Why would Kaoru ring the doorbell? He had keys.

That decided it. She was not going to answer the door. And if it was some kind of package he was waiting for, well, too fucking bad. He could get it at the post office. She didn't care if his white-and-mauve suit came in for the wedding or not; Tamaki's rage was not her problem.

_Dingding!_

Nope. She wasn't moving.

"Hey, are you going to open up or not?"

She felt like she'd been dropped into a sea of jello from the top of the Empire State Building. Catching her breath again, she sprang to her feet, leaped over the end of the sofa and pulled open the door to find Kaoru staring back at her in complete shock. She checked herself to make sure she wasn't having one of those _oh-shit-why-do-I-have-no-clothes _dreams.

"Who the hell are _you_?" he said.

Diana blinked. Looked back over her shoulder at the laptop, which had reverted to the login screen from lack of activity over the last ten minutes. Then back at the man standing at the door.

"Oh," she replied.

Hikaru stepped past her and surveyed the rest of the apartment, as if bracing himself for any more changes. "I didn't realize he's become independent enough to start keeping secrets from me. Have I been left behind?"

Diana shut the door quietly enough to hear Hikaru mutter "Finally switched to Ubuntu" as he took a seat on the sofa, his feet propped up upon the coffee table. He looked back at her. "I didn't realize he was living so...humbly. Wait, is this your apartment?"

"What?"

"I had to get the address from Mori, and it looks like Mori told me not to bring my stuff over yet for a reason." He smirked, linking his fingers behind his head and stretching. "I wouldn't want to 'interfere' with anything."

Diana shook her head. "Don't be so quick to jump to conclusions, Hitachiin-san Number Two. In any case, Hitachiin-san Number One wasn't expecting you back, so this is going to be a pleasant surprise."

Hikaru nodded. "If you say so. Well then." He said the last two words in Kaoru's exact tone. If he had even pretended to know her, she could have been totally fooled. "Where exactly is he?"

Diana shrugged. "Um...should I get you something to drink? I can make chai tea."

Hikaru shrugged. "Sure, why not."

As she started to set the milk to boiling, he asked, "How long has this been going?"

"I'm just going to be here for a total of five days," she answered, setting out the chai tea powder and the sugar from the cabinets. She set the microwave timer for ten minutes so she could get back to the pot before the milk would have a chance to bubble up over the brim. Then, leaning onto the kitchen counter in Hikaru's direction, she added, "You guys don't need to get too excited over it; it's nothing special. Tomorrow night, I'll just walk out of his life and he won't even remember me anymore. Though it _is _generous of him to help me while I am here." Yet half of her couldn't help thinking, _Generous, my foot. _

"You think so? Mori-sempai didn't."

"By the way, Hitachin-san told me about you, but he never mentioned where you were."

"I've been studying fashion design and business abroad. My mother's a designer, and my father's heads a software company. Kaoru was supposed to be going into software but," Hikaru shrugged, "he never really liked it much anyway, so he just went straight to hosting instead."

She shouldn't have done it, planting it in there like a thorn he'd forget until something else brushed it and made it sting worse. "So he used to like hosting back then?"

Hikaru frowned. "What do you mean he 'used' to?" Then he grinned. "Are you sure he hasn't gotten tired of coming home to you smelling of other women?"

It had been a long time since last she had to put on a mask. She smiled congenially and reassured him he was trying too hard to form a connection between herself and his brother, and that he really should stop his teasing. Then she turned away from him to pretend she was checking that the milk wasn't boiling over. _Nobody knew what Kaoru was doing to himself in all this time. Nobody except Mori. But in the end it's Kaoru's own doing, cutting himself off from everyone else—what would they have been thinking? How could anyone know if he shuts himself into his own little world like this, pushing everyone else away? Why didn't he just quit the host business earlier? No one would have thought less of him. He has greater things he could be doing, so why did he tie himself to it? In fact, both of his parents sound wealthy. It's not as if following a passion would put him under any financial constraints. What in the world is he doing to himself? And why?_

"Hitachiin-san," she said.

"You can just call me Hikaru-kun."

_Wow. At least one of them is friendly. _"Hikaru-kun, then." Diana turned to face him again, feeling it was inappropriate to ask any other way. "May I ask you about something personal?"

He hesitated, but nodded.

"About Ootori Kyouya...and the Host Club...can you tell me about them?"

He smiled sadly. "Well..." He moved over to the sofa seat closer to her and crossed his arms over the back. She thought for a moment his weight would tip the sofa over, but he got comfortable without fear and spoke. "You've already met Kaoru and me. We were the devil type. It was fun. Then there was Mori-sempai, who you've met, and Hunny-chan, the wild, bad boy type and the loli-shota type. Then Tamaki was the president, and he was princely, and Kyouya was vice president. He was the cool type, and he rarely actually engaged in host-like activities. He served more often as a manager, but he knew how to talk politely and his general air of indifference made him made him something of a mystery to people who didn't know him."

"To people who didn't know him?"

"Yeah. Haruhi was telling us this. He once saved a woman from buying a fake...something, but when Haruhi asked him why, he explained she was the wife of an electrical company's president...or something. He said he knew because he recognized the ring on her finger, but Haruhi later realized there was no way for Kyouya to see the ring from wherever he was standing."

"Looks like he goes to some great lengths to maintain this image."

Hikaru scoffed. "Tono read him like a book."

"Tono?"

"Tamaki. Oh yes, and then there was...well, Haruhi. He was a natural. Came to our school for the elite on scholarship."

"You mean she?"

Hikaru laughed. "Kaoru told you about that?"

"Well, that is who is getting married to Tamaki-san, right?"

There was a flicker of hesitation before he smiled. "That's right. That's why I came back." His smile faltered. "Didn't realize I should have gotten an earlier plane ticket to catch a funeral, too, though." She gave her condolences and he shook his head. "There's nothing you could do about it," he said with a laugh. "Why are you apologizing?"

This merited the first, true laugh she had the whole week. "Suppose I had time traveling powers. Got any dirt on him from your host club years that I could use to blackmail him?"

Hikaru's eyes lit up. "We're terrible people, Diana-chan. Terrible people." He grinned.

"Well then," she said in Kaoru's tone, "you must enlighten me while we have our tea."

* * *

><p><em>But no one could tell me a thing about a woman of such description, and of course not! In the space of the hours we'd lost her, she'd recruited the aid of her Prince Charming and, after leaving Club Eden, turned into a man attired as a Club Eden host! Next thing we know, the police found evidence she had been in an apartment complex not her own, "his" tie dangling from a chair in the kitchen. What a spicy life this woman seems to be leading! The woman she had tricked into spending a night with her asked that we not divulge her name, but she did state that our subject might have maltreated her, for the victim had been blinded drunk and passed out until morning, when she realized her guest was not a man.<em>

* * *

><p>Once Diana had assured him that the coast was clear, Hikaru departed Kaoru's premises, stopping only to put a finger to his lips. "Our little secret."<p>

Diana smiled sadly. When she turned back the hands of time, will there have been a universe that continued on its own trajectory in which Hikaru was able to surprise Kaoru at the wedding? Then another thought. If so, would she disappear from it? And it would function fine without her? And yet on the other hand, who was to say the universe could be governed from particular pinpoints originating from a fake cell phone? Everyone's lives, everyone's realities, changed uniformly from one focal point? The sheer enormity of such a fantastic phenomenon was mindboggling. Was the universe being changed each time, or was she perhaps creating new...copies of it, and each time she jumped back, she actually jumped into a new copy? So then she disappeared from the other copies and it kept functioning, but in her hand she had the power to make more and—

_This is nonsense. _Diana waved at Hikaru as he climbed into a limo—_a limo!—_and disappeared around the corner. She tried to swallow her heart back down her throat, try to put it back into its place. She didn't know much about alternate universes, but she could go for a world without limos and buses for sure.

* * *

><p>"Wow." Diana couldn't breathe when she saw it in Kaoru's hand. The sack of clean laundry.<p>

"I have hygiene. Why are you impressed by this?"

_Men with hygiene. Not like my dad._

He stepped in through the very same threshold his brother had crossed only minutes before. "Are you _sniffing_ me?"

"No!" she said, for a moment jealous she wouldn't see his face at the wedding.

"Why is the TV on? And on mute? Why are you watching infomercials?"

"Don't worry about it."

Kaoru had deposited his clean clothes into his room and kept talking. "Why didn't you answer the phone?"

"What?"

"I called you four times, you wouldn't pick up."

_Oh. _"I gave you the wrong number." When he didn't say anything, she told him the real one, and there was silence on the other end which she assumed was him logging the new number.

"Did you find anything new?" he asked.

"I might have learned a thing or two about Mister Ootori."

Diana sat down to check her emails again. Her professor was sending her warnings of a failing grade on the AI project, and she was starting to get butterflies in her stomach thinking if that time machine didn't work right now...well... Kaoru took a seat on the sofa, crossed an ankle over his knee, pondering the chai in his cup, then her. She typed her reply, glancing once, twice over the monitor, seeing something in his eyes she could not look at for more than half a second. Half wishing it was Hikaru with another cup of chai instead, she finally crumbled: "What is it?"

"Who was here?"

What? She'd wiped away all the evidence. The chairs straightened out. Cups washed and replaced into cabinets. Why did he have reason to believe she wasn't the only who had—

"I opened the cabinet, and there were two cups moist and still warm," Kaoru said. "The pot on the stove has a mark for where the total chai had been. It fits two cups."

"What makes you think I didn't just drop the first cup, decide to wash it later, and take another cup?"

"Because you have a very particular look on your face when you think I'm saying something stupid, and you're not wearing that." He laughed at her stunned expression.

_Never mind. I literally did _not_ wipe_ _away the evidence. _"The TM should have gone to you instead. You seem to be such a wonderful detective."

"So who was it?"

Diana shook her head and chuckled. "I can't tell you. It's a secret."

"Don't keep secrets from me." He said it so softly she barely heard it over the tap of keys.

"Then it's a surprise. The good kind." She stopped typing. She couldn't carry on this conversation if she let her mouth run faster than her brain. "I need to go to the bathroom."

He looked like he wanted to say something, but decided against it.

After she washed her face, she paused, drew close to the mirror, traced a finger over the gap in her right cheek. Sighing, she strolled back out into the bedroom, paused to watch Kaoru through the doorway, his back turned to her, silhouetted against the great window. He didn't move. Some of his laundry was still scattered across his queen-size bed. _Ain't he living like a king. Wait..._ She checked him again, then slid the green polo on the bed aside. A book. She glanced up at him again. Glanced at the title of the book. Stopped breathing.

There, another book under the black trousers. Another in the sack he had used to carry his clean laundry back. She stacked them atop each other, placed them on the coffee table in front of Kaoru. He did not look surprised.

"You can't drink chai cold," she muttered. He let her take his still full cup from him. Microwave, thirty seconds, start.

At twenty-five, she heard Kaoru chuckling behind her. "We've been here before."

"Almost," she said with a smile. "But it was you bringing _me _coffee."

Twenty seconds. _The Longest Walk: The World of Bomb Disposal._

Fifteen seconds. _Bombs Have No Pity: My War Against Terrorism._

Ten seconds. _You Only Blow Yourself Up Once. _

Five seconds. "Who did your brother love?"

_BEEEEP. BEEEEEP. BEEEEEP._

Her fingers hovered over the button that released the microwave door. She didn't want to press it for fear that he might whisper the name the moment she did and it would be lost in the yawn of the microwave, eaten up. She started to feel it when she saw the look on Kaoru's face, when he opened the door to find Tamaki and Haruhi. He wasn't looking at Tamaki. She understood now. The reason Hikaru was supposedly not to return. The reason Kaoru would cut ties with them. Sort of.

The clock in Hikaru's room was ticking again. It had been ticking for a long time. How many ticks now? Forty? Sixty? A hundred? She didn't keep track.

With her thumb she gently pressed down on the button. The first set of locks on the microwave door freed so the door came halfway out of its normal position. Did she miss it? Then she pressed all the way and slapped the door shut before it could smack her forehead. _Geez. _

"Haruhi." He'd said it at last. "Fujioka Haruhi."

She had to kneel to set the chai down next to the stack of books. She picked up the top book, _Bombs Have No Pity_, and when she opened it the corner of the cover scratched at the jeans over Kaoru's knee. "Suoh Tamaki and Hitachiin Hikaru." She flipped to the table of contents. "This was because of the host club?"

"Did you really read that much out of a list of names on that DVD cover?"

She'd forgotten. "I've met more than half of you now, haven't I? You, Haruhi, Tono, Mori—"

"Tono?"

_Whoa. Too close. Way too close. _"Didn't Mori-san—"

"Mori doesn't call him Tono."

"So then all that's left is Hikaru and Hunny and Kyouya."

"I see." Kaoru leaned his elbows onto his knees and his face into his hands. "Is that what is happening?"

Diana did not know what to answer to that, so she changed the subject. "Were you a host, that day, at the cafe? And I a potential customer?"

Kaoru laughed softly. "You were a potential lawsuit after that bloody knee. I couldn't let that happen to Ena-chan. I was filling in for her that day."

"A lawsuit?"

"Americans are crazy."

"Real funny." She reached for the next book and flipped through its contents as well. "You're not drinking your tea."

He obliged her, then held the chai, once again settling himself to ponder at it again. "It wasn't just Tono and Hikaru."

"Hmm?"

He opened his mouth to say something, closed it.

"Was it Mori-san?"

From the look on his face, she wondered if she'd just asked something like if penguins were birds again. "Mori has Hunny."

"...What."

He shook his head and smacked her forehead lightly. "It was me, stupid."

She rubbed her forehead, reminding herself not to cuss at him for a custom that some American would say incurs brain damage before promptly filing charges. "Wait! Not you _and _Hikaru!"

"I made way for him to try and pursue her."

Diana stopped rubbing her forehead.

Kaoru put his head in his hands again, staring at the floor between his knees. "I made way for him thinking this was the first time he'd opened up to the world. He was... Ha ha, he was selfish, and impulsive, immature, and I was always there to correct him. To guide him. That was my identity, for the first eighteen years of my life. I was the flip side of his coin. What I didn't realize was, I have the same thing inside me. You showed me that. When we realized what was happening, though we both always knew deep down inside, when Tono and Haruhi finally...that's when we collapsed, and there's no way Tono or Haruhi would have accepted that. Hikaru left, I joined a host club, maybe to find a replacement for what we had, and then..."

His hollow laugh shook his shoulders. "I'm not telling it straight. Look at me lying to you..." He drank from the cup and continued. "I thought I could protect him. I thought I could do it for him, all the way."

"Do what?"

"Give up Haruhi."

_Give up Haruhi to Tono. _

"No one knew except for Mori," Kaoru continued. "No one knew what I felt, so one day, Haruhi came to me, to ask me, to ask about Hikaru. Before everything. Before Tamaki. She came to ask about Hikaru. To ask if Hikaru..."

"Kaoru, you don't have to say anymor—"

"I couldn't." He could barely choke out the word. "I didn't know I didn't commit one hundred percent to what I'd begun. I didn't know that when it came down to it, I'd"—she grabbed the cup out of his hands before the rest of the contents could spill onto the floor—"that in the end, the moment I could have given Hikaru all, I'd pull back as far as I could because I couldn't let my brother have her... I said to myself, I could never see him the same way again. And that would be the equivalent of Haruhi taking _him_ from me. Do you understand that? I betrayed my brother. I took Haruhi away from him first."

* * *

><p><strong>AN: We can all feel it now, and arc coming to an end. If I did go straight for a KyouyaxOC fic the way I intended last year, everything about the rest of the host club would be gone. When I started getting an inkling about what pieces of information Diana is going to find out at a certain time, Kaoru kind of kept elongating his role and kept going ooon and ooon and ooon and suddenly he had a story of his own. **

**Meanwhile, some of things Diana realized while spending her time with him I didn't even realize until I was sitting at the keyboard typing it up. There's a lot to think about in Diana's circumstance, and whether I agree with what the characters say or don't say, I think this is the first time I've really come face to face with "What is the character's state of mind right now?" and then "What would the characters state of mind have been if _?" that I can really separate from myself. **

**Anyway, while the story finally rolls over the Kaoru arc next chapter, it's far from finished. There's more to the mystery of who-dunnit and why, and you can be sure that there'll be more of Kaoru and Kyouya to come! **


	8. Addiction

******Long time no nothing. ;) A late Christmas gift, perhaps?**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 8: Addiction<strong>

"**I'll be back."**

* * *

><p>Like the jumbled faces of a Rubik's cube, they were all there, the whole time, staring at her face.<p>

_Me? I'm the devil type. Or I used to be, with my twin brother. But I discovered I can't be a devil without him._

_How is Tamaki? And Haruhi? And Hunny?_

Mori had said it too. _Tamaki and Haruhi and Hunny, they don't know, and they never have to find out. You can still go back._

_You think I'm going to be able to look Haruhi, or Tamaki in the eyes and say, 'Congratulations, have a happy life'? Well, yeah. Maybe I can. I'm a pretty good liar, aren't I? _

_Don't worry,_ _I won't go off on the whole 'Life's not fair' rant. I can leave that to my brother._

There was something inside that cringed and pulled tight as she opened her arms and gathered Kaoru into her embrace.

"I'm despicable," he whispered at the base of her neck, and she felt a tear trickle off the bridge of his nose onto her throat. "I pulled the rug right out under his feet. I was the deciding factor. I am the reason my brother is miserable elsewhere. _I _am the reason I can't stand to see the others. Haruhi was supposed to be marrying Hikaru."

_Don't judge him by what you see now; there's a lot you might miss about him if you do. _Mori's words rang in her head. So that's why the host club split apart. On the one hand Hikaru had been thinking Haruhi never loved him, and on the other Haruhi was thinking Hikaru never loved her. Tamaki was thinking he was the cause of the club's collapse when both the twins fled, and Mori was the eternal bystander, always keeping faith in the fact that Kaoru could come back to what he was before... This was what Kaoru had been bottling these last three years? The lie to Haruhi, the lie to Hikaru, that broke the club, and then the guilt, and joining the host clubs for the constant yearning what used to be. But he didn't realize what he was chasing and he didn't realize why number one in the host clubs meant nothing at all.

_But on the other hand,_ she thought, as Kaoru's shuddering breaths became longer and smoother again, _a single lie can tear a family apart. It's like a bomb, whatever he had said to Haruhi. Everyone touched by it is left with scars in body and heart._ She stopped stroking his hair at the thought. _He did this to himself, and if they find out, they'll never forget. _

"What did you mean," she said, "when you said I showed you that..."

He leaned into her, shoving back the coffee table using his arms behind her. It scraped across the floor until he had room enough to land his knees on the floor with hers, his hands still gripping the table behind her. "I needed to talk...when we were in the cafe...and you needed to talk...so I thought maybe...so I gave you the card..."

_Just talk, _he had said, now that she remembered it.

"I thought you would understand when you said there were a lot of things wrong. So I picked you. I needed to talk, but now that I was trying to set up a relationship that wasn't host-customer...I was selfish, and impulsive, and immature...I was everything I saw Hikaru become when he first tried to break out...because suddenly I didn't know how to be anything else either. But now..."

He pulled back and whispered to the tip of her nose, tracing the hollow left by the ring with his thumb. "Does it hurt?"

"Yes."

Kaoru looked at it a little longer, then sank his lips upon it. "I'm sorry," he spoke into her skin.

She couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything as his lips skimmed down her jaw, down her chin.

"I don't want you to be a customer." His thumb slid down to where his breath fluttered at her skin, made eddies that spread up to under her lip and left everywhere burning. She didn't realize what a bright shade of brown his eyes were. It was like the sparkling water of Lake Superior; every spot and every swirl around his iris was as clear as the rocks fifty feet under. Transparent caramel. That was his eyes.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

_Afraid of you? I've always been!_

"The bomb," he added. "You're going to defuse it, aren't you?"

_Oh. _"I try not to think about it." She realized she was still holding one of the books in her right hand. That's what he'd been doing for this long this morning, going to the library for these? How long did he stay there? The clothes that she touched...they must have dried and been left in the drying machine in the laundromat so long they regained their moisture. "I'm not ready to defuse any bombs yet," she said half chuckling. "This was the...third run since the explosion, the first was simply the first time it happened, and second time I discovered the TM, and then I reverted again because I didn't believe it. I just need to know everything that is happening right now...I don't know anything about defusing bombs right now. Ouch!"

Kaoru glared at her. He'd been growing more and more unsatisfied as he talked, pulling her closer she thought at first, but now pulling her tighter to almost squeezing her.

"What happens if...?"

"I don't know."

He dug his nose against hers, locked eyes with her. "The bomb is underneath the bus. At the right rear corner. They still don't know if it was triggered or timed."

She couldn't breathe with his hand creeping up her spine. How many girls had he already done this to?

Something must have changed on her face, because Kaoru's hold slackened. She pulled up one knee and the other and hoisted herself up with the help of the coffee table, stringent against touching any part of Kaoru throughout. His right arm wrapped her from behind her knees—she couldn't move back now without bending at the knees and falling on the table_—_and his left arm snaked around her and pulled her to him, his nose now tracing her waist.

"What happens if you're too close to the bomb?" he asked into the shirt. "What happens if that time machine is destroyed? What happens if you can't reach it? What happens if you can't 'revert' in time? What happens?"

"I don't know..."

"Then how do we find out?!"

Her shirt was getting soaked. He wasn't allowing her to pull away from him now, just hid his face into her abdomen, his shoulders shaking slightly, her shirt—his shirt—gathered and clenched in a fist in his left hand.

"I don't want you to find out the hard way," he said between gasps. With a sudden twisting motion, he dropped her onto the sofa he'd been sitting on before and straddled her, wiping his face with his hands. Catching his breath, he stated, "I don't want you anywhere near that bus. Without even the bomb, the wheels are fifty-eight centimeters tall. It wouldn't even take a full rotation to run the length of your body beneath it!"

She thought he was searching for something in her eyes. She looked away. Looked up at the ceiling, where columns of light, the sunlight reflected off the windows of cars in motion, ran up the length of the ceiling, like the lights of a station in a terminal pouring into a passing transit, like bad video flipping upwards in a TV.

"Where did you get it?" he asked.

She reached into her pocket and pulled it out, placed it into his outstretched hands. Her lungs shrank inside her, so she couldn't take a full breath as she watched the TM being flipped open, someone else's fingers running down its silver edge. That's right, she hadn't allowed a single person to touch it since...ever. And now it could take the single press of a button to—what would happen? If Kaoru pressed the button? What would happen to her? Would she be transported with it back in her hands? Or would Kaoru go back in time and find it in his hands instead? Then were would she be? Would she be back at the bus stop, to find the TM had vanished from her own hands, but the knowledge that the bus would explode? Would she return to her state of mind of the first time, when she didn't know it would explode, or the second one, when she knew it should explode? Then what would she do to suddenly lose it?

She would search for it, of course. And it seemed perfectly likely she would stumble into the same cafe Kaoru had been in, but would Kaoru be there? He would be the one with his memory intact, wouldn't he? Is that how the time machine worked? Whose memory would be intact?

Or what if it was different with each person? Maybe reversion points were personal, so if he pressed it now, would it set a new reversion point for right this moment, and the previous point would be gone? That AI project—she hadn't been attending class the whole week. Academic suicide! And she still had no job. Her whole life would be ruined! Oh yes, and Kyouya would be permanently dead. And she'd have lost her chance to go back to undo anything and everything. ...She needed to get her priorities in order...

"How does it work?" he asked.

"Don't touch it now, but," she hoisted herself up and pulled her legs out from underneath him and gathered them in her arms, "you press the TM button at the top. Wait, I must have an emailed receipt from Ebay. Maybe the previous owner, or the company, has some more information on it."

"Huh." He stood up and walked into the kitchen, examining it as he poured himself a glass of water.

She kept glancing at him from over the laptop monitor. That cell phone. Dropped in a glass of water. Dropped onto the kitchen tiles, damaged beyond repair. Battery comes flying out upon impact. The reversion point disappears when it's put back together.

"Here it is," she said, clicking open _Receipt no.246823048, Reed. _"Atlus Industries. _Juiz_ is what it's called. There's almost no information when you click on it. No website. 100% positive feedback."

She stopped. Kaoru wasn't listening. He was staring at the TM. He flipped it shut and sighed.

"What?" she asked.

He didn't look at her as he walked into his room. She felt unease rising in the base of her stomach. He'd taken the time machine—_Juiz_—with. _Fine. It's fine. Let's just find out more about it first... _The image on Ebay was exactly right. Still free shipping. Wait. _This item is not available. _Was she the last one to buy it? Was she the only one to buy it? How many of these were there? _Juiz. _She'd heard the name before, but where?

When he came back out, Kaoru was dressed in host attire. He placed Juiz onto the table, never looking in Diana's direction as he worked on the buttons at his wrist, shrugged the black coat into place. It was eight.

She felt cold, watching him slip his feet into the black shoes in silence, and when the chaos of the rattling locks swallowed the silence she wanted to put her hands over her ears. "I'll be back," he said, pulling the door shut with a soft click.

But he wouldn't be back in time. In fifteen minutes, Kaoru will be waiting for the Nambu Line at the Ogimachi station. When the bullet train sweeps in, there will be three sharp bangs outside his apartment door. As he reaches for one of the ropes hanging from the top of the train cars and apologizes for knocking into a boy with a skateboard, his apartment door is kicked open and the room is ransacked. And as his eyes glaze over at the subway windows, where they have stop-motion advertisements all across the tunnel walls, Diana will be dragged out blindfolded and handcuffed, unable to answer any more of his calls.

* * *

><p><em>Now, Hongshu and I were at the ready, with our stakeout at young Ms. Reed's apartment, our hands on our cell phones to answer any calls that might tell us more of where the woman had gone. We did not know what fools we were being made into yet again—what a sly fox! The police had ransacked Mr. Hitachiin's apartment the night she tricked that woman into taking her home, and Hitachiin-san was thus able to truthfully tell the police he had no idea where the woman had gone because Ms. Reed had gone away with a woman neither knew, but none of us thought to go back to Hitachiin-san's apartments to look there again! Lo and behold, Prince Charming was hiding our Wicked Cinderella right under our noses for the last four days!<em>

* * *

><p>"Tsunade." The voice in the phone cracked. "I can't come to your birthday party." Tsunade's cell phone rested on the ziploc bag upon the interrogation table. "I'm sorry."<p>

The man was no taller than Diana, but he certainly looked bigger blocking the only source of light in the room and casting her in shadow. Everything was cold. The hard linoleum floor under her knees and the rod of the gun at the base of her head. She couldn't tell time anymore. How long had she been here? The officers had shot the locks on Kaoru's door and had taken her somewhere and she'd fallen asleep terrified that Juiz would be gone.

"Where did you get that?" Her voice quivered.

"Your friend is fine." The man sitting upon the desk said, pointing the baton at her throat. "Why don't we worry about you instead? About the bomb. What is your involvement with it?"

"I didn't do it. I had nothing to do with it."

"We had a reporter who seems to think otherwise. We saw the footage from his camera."

"I don't know how the bomb got there, and I don't know who did it. Use your lie detection, do whatever you want, you will find me innocent!"

"We'll see about that."

The phone began ringing. Her Iphone. The _Xylophone _ringtone known all throughout the states. A second policeman picked up the phone. "Her phone doesn't recognize it."

"Check the number." It continued ringing as the second policeman spoke the number into his radio. There was a response from the other end in seconds. "That belongs to a certain Hitachiin Kaoru."

"Perfect." The first policeman ran the rod down the base of her throat and pushed her back against the corner. "That must be whom the reporter named your accomplice."

"No! He has nothing to do with it!"

The phone stopped ringing. Kaoru'd gotten into voicemail.

"Well?" said the officer. "We should go collect him too, don't you think?"

"No! Please! Stop! I'll do anything! I'll tell you everything!"

"Aaaah, see? See?" The first policeman turned to his comrade. "I told you, she wouldn't last ten hours."

"I just…"

"Haah? Speak up, honey, speak up. We're all ears for you now. Speak up."

"I need to go to the bathroom."

"The bathroom, eh? No problem, no problem, the bathroom's no problem!"

* * *

><p>Two minutes later, Diana leaned against a bathroom stall, Juiz in her hand. <em>Guess I was well prepared for this. <em>It only took two pairs of underwear. I'll be using <em>that _trick again. __She smiled. _Juiz, I will never let anybody else have you. You might be my curse as much as my blessing, but whatever happens, I __**will**__ survive. __**I will not die.**_

_But I guess this is goodbye…Kaoru. The world will be much better when we meet again. _

_I promise._

* * *

><p><strong>Omake File<strong>

Voicemail. You have...one new message. Received at: twelve. A.M.

"_Diana. I quit the host club. It's not that I don't want to be an addiction. I just want to be yours. [static] I'm coming home now. See you soon_."

"Message Erased."

* * *

><p><strong>Merry Christmas!<br>**

**And if you feel up to giving back ;) let me know what you think of 1) how the characters have grown and 2) the climax. I'm really concerned that the police scene is a letdown. :( Any suggestions? And 3) is it readily apparent what Diana did to hide Juiz or should I be more explicit? I'd really like any feedback you have so I can use it to revise the next four chapters in the next two weeks. It'll be a lot easier with some input. In any case, t****hanks for reading and get excited for the next arc!**


	9. The Reporter

**Part 2 of the late Christmas present! Hope you're enjoying the story so far!. Well, I mean you're still here so... :) I know I had advertised the next segment of the story as a Mori arc, but the story took itself out of my hands and started writing itself again. Honestly, that moment when your protagonist starts falling in love with the wrong character.**

**Well anyways, that's my problem. Here's chapter nine. **

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 9: The Reporter<strong>

"_You went right up to that limousine and left a kiss upon the window." ~Izaya_

* * *

><p>It was starting to get wearying, seeing this scene again. She thought she would be relieved that Juiz was back in her hands, but her arms felt heavier than ever. By her side was Toilet Paper Man. Skater Boy comes by in thirty seconds. There's Riza Hawkeye, switching her song on her I-pod, and sitting on the bench right behind her was Woman With Baseball Cap And Knapsack. It was starting to sound like a set of badly named Native Americans. Oh yes, and the Pikachu school bus. Oh! 8:39 a.m. She had more than three minutes total? More than 180 seconds. So. Where was Mr. Ootori's limousine? It was coming towards the bus, so it would be driving across the street, which meant she had perhaps a minute and a half total to get to the other side.<p>

11 missed calls, 2 messages. _Two messages? Kaoru had left four voicemails on the TM that day..._

She crossed the street, recalling that her right heel was about to plunge into the manhole lid and come right off. Well, why bother with such an embarrassing scene? She skirted around the manhole cover, took a stand next to the pole with the button for the Walk-Don't-Walk sign on the other side of the street, pulled off her right red shoe and slammed it in an arc against the pole. She felt the heel give way in one swift motion, but her left heel took three whacks. And before anything funny could happen, like Orihara turning up with her shoe heels, she dropped those into her purse, which she decided not to lose this time. She checked that her wallet and all her belongings were exactly where she placed them and cursed to find the fingers of her right hand red with lipstick. Woman With Baseball Cap And Knapsack was watching her.

The stoplight was turning red again—which meant it had been turning red the moment Diana reverted, every single time. Perfect. Then if she needed, she could leap-frog her way over the cars, though next time she had to pay attention which cars became stationary when. Well, that got her to the other side of the road faster, but she couldn't imagine it would be particularly useful if she intended on staying under the radar with that Izaya Orihara reporter. He talked the way a journalist wrote. There was poetry coming out of his mouth in the way he gave you shit, and he probably still thought his painful thoughts in poetry when he was taking one. Either way, she just wanted to keep him shut up, so she didn't intend on stunts.

Ootori's limousine came to a halt in the front of the stoplight at 8:41 a.m. Diana decided to test the most basic hypothesis before anything had to become unnecessarily complicated. She dropped off the curb, approached the left side of the vehicle, the passenger side in Asia, and pulled on the door handle. The driver's head turned at the sound. The fact that he heard meant the music was down low enough if there _was _music. She tapped her knuckles on the window, and when he shook his head, proceeded down the length of the vehicle without pause. Her fingers traced the hot, black, carbon steel, passing three sets of black windows before finally arriving to the door in the back. There were people watching her now. She had better be prepared to act surprised, shocked, dismayed, irritated when she walked her fingers down to the handle and pulled it up to find it locked. Like a snapshot of a lover's quarrel, the kind they put on _Yahoo!_ these days.

She readjusted the straps of her purse back over her shoulder blades and pulled up at the door handles harder than she had intended. It snapped back to its position without giving any indication of whether the door had been unlocked or not. There was no seeing through the black glass, even though she put her nose right up to it, ended up doing nothing but kissing her reflection and feeling stupid about it. She tapped on it, suddenly unsure if she should even expect the solo passenger to be in the seat farthest back when he probably had about six other seats he could be occupying. For all she knew, she had passed directly behind him and he didn't even know she existed yet. She had heard that some limos had TVs on one side or the other; maybe he was engrossed in the newest episode of...whatever these anime things were and wouldn't even know she existed unless she smashed an axe through a window and screamed his name.

Green light. She realized it when she felt the limo start sliding underneath her fingers and in that moment looked down the wall of the vehicle and saw his face, the limo driver's, in the side view mirror. That look one would have to find an insect had crawled into one's ears. Unveiled disgust in his private moment. Diana shot back her feet, bringing her toes back into safety, and braced herself for the symphony of chaos. _I shouldn't have time to think "There goes Kyouya" like this—I'm not trying hard enough!_

But her body didn't move after she had returned to the curb and watched the limousine achieve its final destination, and then for the first time she watched it play out before her eyes before she heard it. That first blast now a low burst to her ears, fireworks echoing off city walls, a discontinuous set of sound waves coinciding with what a turning of the limousine about the Z axis in relation to Diana. It flipped sideways onto its head, and the smoke funneling out of the bus seemed to be spewing out of the tires of the upended limousine like that from a volcano.

There were still cars moving. For some reason, Diana had been under the default impression that time stopped during these things, like all the atoms of a certain place came to a standstill, like they would honor impact of the life shattering calamity that had just occurred, and everything would hit absolute zero. She realized the contrary when she saw the cars that had been hit by the blast while driving past in the opposite direction were still skidding forward, in fact, skidding no less than three feet away from her with the side that had been exposed to the bus with a gaping crater through which she could see blood painted on the opposite window. Actually, she didn't realize the world had not reached absolute zero not because of this car sliding past, but because she had just been about to run into the road and would have gotten hit by this car in her mad dash to the dying Ootori. She didn't know where she suddenly got the idea—what would she do, punch a hole through the window and ask for his last words, claim to be his guardian angel would he please hold on? Tell him he was about to die, but he wouldn't alone? Well, of course he was alone! Everybody was alone when they died.

_S_he hesitated mentally, halfway between a pizza truck and the limousine. Did she want to see him in this state? Maybe she had better spend a couple of days watching the goriest, most repulsive "horror" features for the sake of trying to numb her brain for what was real?

Her instincts did not allow her to land on her knees at the smashed window, as would have been more convenient if those knees were not needed within the next month or so. She sat on her haunches, reached up for the door and pulled down its handle, slightly disoriented having to do it upside down. At least she didn't have to punch a hole in with her fist.

_The more time you spend thinking and delaying looking at him, the farther away he is by the time you do! _She didn't want to see him. The fact of the matter was, her only impression of him now was one picture with his name on Kaoru's DVD set. This wasn't an impression she wanted to have of him. This was the one she would see in nightmares because thus far, that kid whose body was at this exact moment flung out onto the street with one eyelid half closed was _Just sleepingsleepingsleeping_. This was Kyouya. This was a man who had a name, a reputation, and friends who were people she knew. People she knew would be crying in their own private memorial service with the picture of this man in the fences of their memories, each fence post a different shared moment that will now be jammed harder into the brains of the weeping with the distorting hammer of a permanent goodbye.

This was the first time she was meeting him. _Let's make it the same for him then, before he slips away. _She hesitated again—_screw it_—and dived into the car, landing on the ceiling running a river of cognac and whiskey and Kyouya's blood arcing and blooming through it like red food coloring in a glass of water, thinned out by the alcohol, clean and red and beautiful.

"Kyouya! Kyouya!"

The blood was pooling out of the back of his head, but his face was untouched and he blinked at her, his hand twitching and reaching for—she grabbed it, his cell phone, placed it in her pocket, realized that dizzying explosion in her head resulted from hitting the floor of the limo. And then she reached for that hand and looked back at him. He was looking at her hands, dumbfounded. She wasn't doing a very good job of comforting him.

What do you say to a dying person? A dying person you don't know? I'm-here-I'm-here, like in the movies? Did that really cut it? Was that in the movies because it was in life, or because it made death look better?

"Am I going to make it?" he whispered, and clenched his jaw, eyes wide in the sudden fear of the impossible possibility.

"Yes. I'll get you through it." His eyes were silver discs, collecting all the white sunlight from the world coming to life outside, pooling in a sparkling film of tears that magnified the iris. She caught the first one sliding down the side of his face, saying, "Take it back."

The only thing left he could do was twitch his eyebrows now to express his confusion, or his dissatisfaction, or his pain.

"I said I'll get you through it, so take it back." She caught the next one and the next one. "Take them all back."

It sounded like the beginning of a laugh, his last breath, a simple "Hah." And it looked like the beginning of a smile, his lips. She put a hand up to close his eyes, but no matter how much she willed it her hands would not touch his face again. She was under the default impression that eyes look "dead and empty," as if the two go hand in hand, but like glass eyes of a porcelain doll these only needed to follow her to bring him back to life. Perhaps because the lids on his open eyes were down farther than normal. The smile had reached his eyes, and she didn't want to put it out.

The sound of sirens woke her.

"Madam—are you all right?" It was a civilian, not an officer or a paramedic.

She nodded. "I wasn't in here when it happened," she offered, and she took his hand to be pulled out. "Wait! Is the driver okay?" she asked. She had clean forgotten! The man shook his head. Behind the man, people clumped in the sidewalks, some staring back at the wreckage, holding onto each other's arm, shoulder, sleeves, themselves. The limousine behind her was trashed in the front; the tire closest to the bus left behind a spinning axel. The black twisted metal of the back of the bus was a mouth puckered out to accept more victims into its black hole, one she didn't bother to investigate. Across the street there were more people rushing towards the scene, and an ambulance snaking through road construction down the avenue. Riza Hawkeye was there, calling the police again.

The man's eyes widened at the blood across her palms, running down her leg, soaking through her skirt. "It's not mine," she kept explaining as she followed him to the curb. "I promise it's not mine." She wiped her hands across her shirt, smearing the blood across her palms. "See?" It was starting to bead along the lines of her hand. "Oh, I _am_ bleeding."

"Are you insane? There are shards of glass inside your leg!"

"Ah." It doesn't hurt until you notice. She buckled and fell along the curb, biting back the need to cry like a baby as she plucked out a triangle of glass off of her shins. This was a completely different vantage point. Looking past the forest of legs she was finally able to see the missing tire from the limousine. It was parked at the foot of Woman with Baseball Cap and Knapsack, who was milling along through the crowd, her khaki pants easy pick out of the Japanese crowd, showing them her wallet and quickly bowing and moving on.

_Now what do I do? Do I go back to Kaoru? _

She couldn't see a way out of getting punched again, with his temper what it was in this moment of emotional instability, and she couldn't see anything after that being anything different from her previous interaction with Kaoru: _"So you were supposed to save him this time? So what happened? What do you mean you couldn't open the doors? So you watched him die? What are you going to do in my apartment? Wait and watch like the last time? How is that going to help you? Did I give you permission to use my laptop? Get your own charger."_ Etc. etc.

Diana gritted her teeth. No. Mori. She had to find Mori.

"Excuse me!" Another man, this one with cropped, graying hair and a familiar smile. "Are you all right, Miss? Let me call the paramedics right over!"

_Izaya. _Diana struggled to rise as she saw him walk away. _How does he get to me before a paramedic does!? _She was not afraid to openly search for Izaya's cameraman, who stood hunched behind a car, his lens trained upon the inside compartment of Kyouya's limousine. She felt a flash of hot, then cold, but she couldn't make herself move forward and block the scene camera was eating up, all the interior of the upended limousine.

The reporter was returning with a paramedic, no doubt sweetening her up for what he probably imagined was a homing kill. What was he going to turn her into, now? She couldn't wait to find out. And she didn't have to.

Izaya Orihara. Not tall like Mori was tall, but not short either. He kept his hands in front of him at all times through a variety of opening motions and five-fingered pointing and readjusting his fake, silver-rimmed frames (he had admitted to her in the cafe he took to them because it made him look smarter). He'd brought a medic away from the bus through who knew what kind of hassle, but he now stood with a look of concern that required at least an Emmy awards to say the least.

She had to be distraught. She couldn't be a viper to him right now; that would be rude, and thus suspicious. She has no reason to dislike this man yet, as far as he was concerned. In fact, she was supposed to be sporting a smile of relief, and some show of gratitude was supposed to be in order, and she had been doing none of that. She was helping Orihara dig her grave, without a price.

"Thank you," she said, hoping the paramedic's alcohol swabs would be justification for her grimace.

He smiled at her and shook his head. "No need to thank me. I'd feel bad if I didn't help out. What happened to your hands?" Straight for the money. "And your calves—my god, looks like studded with diamonds. You would look like a goddess if you weren't bleeding."

Wow. Maybe if she kept quiet and went on grimacing at the paramedic, he'd go away.

"Are you all right?" asked the paramedic, surveying the damage to her legs.

"I think so." _8:56 a.m. _She had to get out of here.

"We have to take you to the hospital."

She had to find Mori. How was she going to find him with her legs like this? "Oh really?"

"Before your legs get infected. Now this might sting a little. We're going to have to dig them out." The paramedic had pulled out a disinfectant wipe.

_Oh no. No no no. _"Dig them out with what?" Diana blocked the woman from applying the wipe to her leg with her hands.

"Tweezers, or a needle," said the woman. "The more you move, the farther in they are moving. We have to get these out as soon as possible, while they are still closest to the surface."

"We don't need needles."

"Let me help, ma'am," Izaya said to the paramedic. "I have a car. I can drive my girlfriend straight there. You'll need your ambulances for the others."

_Wait—what—_Diana began to stand up.

The paramedic shook her head. "You should drive her to a hospital farther away. This one will be packed with the worst cases."

"Yes, ma'am. Of course, ma'am! Hongshu! Give me the camera, you pick her up! Don't let her walk a single step! Thank you so much, ma'am! Thank you so much!"

"No—Orihara—stop!" Diana took a few steps back, retreating from the approaching cameraman. The medic was already gone, and she turned her face away from the approaching policemen that shuffled past her. Hongshu took this opportunity to slide an arm under her knees and pull up, forcing her to buckle backwards. _What, are they __**trained**_ _in kidnapping? _"Let me go! Let me—"

* * *

><p>"A toothbrush?" Diana looked at the reporter incredulously from her perch on the bathtub.<p>

"More salt, Hongshu," Izaya commanded, popping the toothbrush out the cardboard back of its container. Hongshu crinkled his nose over his mustache and poured another bag of Epson salt into the tub. Diana moved her legs instinctively out of the way, her skirt bunched up in her right hand, away from the water.

"You want me to use a toothbrush?" Diana repeated.

"Don't worry about it," he said with a momentary look of sympathy. "The salts will bring the glass outwards, and we'll brush it off. Believe me, I've been through this before. One time, my adventurous aunt thought it would be great to give me horseback lessons, but my horse decided to stop for a snack and I fell forward, right over its head. Got gravel all over the side of my face. My aunt brushed each and every piece out with a toothbrush. Without the salt and warm water."

Diana gulped and took a seat again, hissing as she stretched one leg across the tub and accepted the brush from Izaya. She looked up at Hongshu and Izaya. "What are you looking at? _Get. Out._"

Izaya smirked and pulled the tray that contained the mini soaps and shampoos provided by the hotel from the sink. He took a seat next to her wet foot and held the tray under her calf. "You want the shards of glass to fall in the water so you can step on them again? Hongshu, get out unless I call you. Go watch the news report."

Hongshu obliged. Diana leered at Izaya.

"Look, do you want to go to the hospital so they could do it with needles?" Izaya started to get up.

"No! Wait!" Diana bit her tongue. _God dammit…_

Izaya smiled. "Okay then. Let's get started. Hurts, doesn't it? You have to use slower strokes."

"Why are you helping me so much?"

"You have to coax them out. Why? How did you know my name?"

"You're a reporter. Why wouldn't I know your name?"

"Ha ha, I'm that famous already?"

Diana bit her tongue again to keep from crying out. "Crap." The toothbrush dropped into the tub.

"See?" said Izaya as he set aside the tray with the four bleeding kernels of glass on the floor. He rolled up his sleeve and sank his hand into the water. "What would you have done without me?"

"Don't get coy with me, buddy," Diana said though gritted teeth, snatching the brush out of his hand.

Izaya shrugged and slid the glass pieces into the garbage before returning to his original position.

"What do you want from me?" Diana asked.

Izaya smiled. "You've got a hell of a one track mind. Why don't you tell me why this happened to you anyway? You don't think I saw it, you diving into Ootori's car? What were you doing there? What's your relationship to him?"

"I was going to thank you for this, the hotel, the salt, the brush, the ride, but I don't think so. You really are disgusting. What are you a reporter of, anyway? Some paparazzi tabloid?"

"I didn't think you were his girlfriend," Izaya intoned to himself, "I expected a lot more crying, but you weren't crying when you came back out. That makes me wonder…what really is your relationship to Ootori?"

"What do you mean?" Diana felt the hair rise on her back.

"You weren't…going in there to check he was dead, were you?"

Diana met his jet black eyes.

"You know, your silence is very reassuring," said the reporter.

"What are you talking about? Why would I—I wasn't involved with that. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what was happening."

"Hey now, what's with the tears? Methinks they're a little late in coming. After all, you went right up to that limousine and left a kiss upon the window, and then watched the explosion without even a second thought. Or at least, that's what it looked like to me."

"I left a…what?"

"And then diving into that particular car, honestly, this is just too good. What is this, a lover's vengeance?"

"I…" Diana froze. "I didn't do this. Stop it. Stop talking to me like this—"

"You—" Izaya stopped midsentence and looked up at Hongshu, who was now standing in the doorway holding Diana's ringing cell phone.

"Tsunade," said Hongshu.

"An accomplice?" Izaya smiled and took the phone from him, hitting the speaker button before extending it to Diana's face.

"Diana, where _are_ you?"

"Tsu—Tsunade," Diana said, her voice hollow. The Time Machine was in the other room. How was she going to get past these two men to get it back?

"My birthday only comes once a year, Diana. You're not pulling another one on me this time."

There was nothing Diana could say to that.

"Hey, where are you? Diana? Are you okay? Wait. You weren't at that accident, were you?"

Izaya nodded before Diana could formulate a response.

"I—yeah, actually—look, Tsunade, I am _so_ sorry, I—"

"Oh my gosh, are you hurt? Are you okay? Oh my gosh, are you at the hospital? Hold on, tell me which one. Let me get a pen—"

"Tsu—Tsunade, wait, no, stop! I'm—I'm okay." But Izaya was shaking his head. Diana heeded Izaya's silent commands. "N-No? No. No, I'm not okay, Tsunade."

_Tell her to come,_ Izaya mouthed.

Diana shook her head vigorously.

_Don't you want to prove your innocence? _

"Diana? Diana, you still there? Hey, listen, I'm coming. I'll—I'll call my brother and we'll drive right up there."

Izaya raised his brows.

"Where are you? Diana? Diana? ...Diana, are you there?"

Fresh streaks of tears were crawling down her face. Before Tsunade could hang up, Izaya hopped to his feet and bounded into the other room. "H-Hey, is this Tsunade? Tsunade, you have to come right away! I don't think she's okay."

"NOO—!" Diana jumped to her feet, but Hongshu's hand clamped over her face so quickly it crashed into her nose and made her eyes water from pain. _NO! _

"Radisson Hotel," she heard Izaya saying. She bit into the hand, tasted the salt of sweat and heard Hongshu's outrage. She breathed deep.

"Yes, I'll be right down to bring you up, just call, okay?"

She reached out and got a hold of the doorway. Hongshu's hand reached over her for the door. He slammed it shut, and she screamed into his other hand as the door made contact with hers. _She has nothing to do with this! _

"The one on Eighth Avenue, remember. Yes, see you soon! Come quickly!"

Izaya snapped the phone shut. Diana clutched her hand in the doorway of the bathroom, crying, Hongshu's hand still over her mouth.

"If you scream," Izaya started. He motioned at the girl with the cell phone. "Look, I took a huge gamble coming after you instead of staying on the scene to see everybody else." He pocketed her phone, unwrapped the plastic cover off of one of the hotel cups resting on the TV stand and filled it with water the sink near the outer doorway. "Now that I have you here…I have to find _something_. Oh, for god's sakes, Hongshu, let her breathe a little."

"_I didn't do anything!_"

Izaya downed the whole cup in one go, watched her sob, started filling another cup. "Sure you didn't. She said she'll be here in an hour. You've got that long, then, don't you?"

"Izaya."

Izaya shut off the tap and waited. This was the first Diana had heard Hongshu's gravelly voice. "What if she's innocent?"

There was contempt in Izaya's eyes, soon replaced by fear, then anger. "Who told you to smash the door into her hand? You idiot!"

She saw her purse. It was on the other side of the room, underneath the camera. _Don't look that way. _It was a psychological flaw, the need to keep looking back at something that needed to be kept safe or hidden. The eyes could give the victim away. She trained her eyes on Izaya. No. She couldn't look at him too long. Her cell phone. The one in his pocket. He'll think she wants to make a run for that.

"So why _weren't _you surprised?" asked Izaya, voice shaking.

"It wasn't real," Diana grasped for an explanation. "I thought…" She slowly stepped away from Hongshu. It brought her closer to the windows.

_The windows_.

"I thought it was all a dream," she said, shuddering. Izaya narrowed his eyes. "Please, please just let me go."

The windows. No veranda outside. Just a straight drop. But the building over had verandas.

"This was all clearly a mistake," sobbed Diana. "Please, it's obvious I didn't do anything."

No one knew about Juiz. She could come back for it later.

"You could just give me back my things and I'll walk out and I'll never talk about anything."

But she couldn't possibly open the window and jump out at the same time.

"We can all just continue on with our lives. How about it? No harm done. We'll just forget everything. How's that?"

Hongshu looked at Izaya. "Izaya."

Diana nodded, vigorously. "See, he's got sense. I mean, Tsunade is coming to pick me up, isn't she? She could just take me right off your hands. And—And—we'll say this all is due to the accident. My hand I mean. It's perfect. Think about it. We could just go back to—to—helping me get glass shards out of my leg. Let's do that. Please, let's do that. I—I can't do it anymore, with my hands like this, so you can help me. You'll help me, right?"

"Fine."

"Right, Izaya? You'll help me, right? You'll—" Diana couldn't breathe for a moment. "Really? Really? Oh thank you! Thank you!"

"If you tell…anyone… I'll find you."

"I won't, no, I won't tell anyone, no one, nobody."

"Well then," Izaya jerked his head towards the bathroom. "Let's finish what we started."

* * *

><p><strong>Read and review. And tell a friend, actually. ;) Onward to chapter ten!<strong>


	10. The Delusions

**Chapter 10: The Delusions**

_I'm not here to mourn for Kyouya Ootori._

* * *

><p>"They were really good people, weren't they?" Tsunade huddled her blanket about her person and plopped onto the floor beside Diana. "Izaya and Hongshu. That Hongshu guy was kind of a looker, you know."<p>

"…Yeah," Diana said, looking at the center of the green, hypnotizing spiral rug that dominated the floor space of Tsunade's bedroom.

"Witnessing it must have been terrible," Tsunade said, pulling out the laptop she had tucked into the blanket with her. "I've never seen you like this. Even after your dog died." She chuckled. "I amend that statement. You were making dead dog jokes back then. Seriously, I think _I_ was more disturbed."

"…Yeah."

"Diana, are you listening to me?"

"…Yeah."

"Diana…oh, you missed your interview then too, right?"

"…What?" Diana looked at Tsunade. "I completely forgot. It's been a few da—hours ago. What time is it?"

"Ten. Cake time?"

Diana forced a smile, wincing at the thought of trying to use a fork. Tsunade's brother, a doctor, had already splinted her right hand and had moved her displaced finger back into place. The drugs were making her slow to respond. "Like you're high or something," Tsunade had commented before her brother had responded with a "Shut it, pipsqueak."

"Say 'Aaaaaah'!" Tsunade had already brought back the two slices of cake and held a fork up to Diana's mouth. Diana looked at the cake. Vanilla with blue ice cream frosting.

Diana felt a lump developing in her throat. "Tsu—" She bit her lip, unable to finish.

Tsunade frowned. "What's wrong? You don't want it?"

Diana smiled through the lump in her throat and opened her mouth. "Mmm. Your brother made it, didn't he?"

"You're getting to know his style, huh?"

Diana ran her teeth over her tongue and winced. "You mean his tendency to double the sugar content? Ugh, I can't believe you can eat this thing."

"Fine! Be that way! I'm not feeding you anymore!"

"Good!"

Tsunade rolled her eyes. Jet black. A lot of Japanese had jet black eyes. Diana looked away.

"Tsunade, can you do something for me?"

"Yeah? After sneering at my cake?"

"Your brother's cake."

"Ungrateful toad. What do you want?"

"I need you to help me find somebody."

"Who?"

"Uhhh…" Wait.

"What do you mean 'Uhhh'?"

"I don't remember his full name."

Tsunade groaned. "What do you mean find him, then?"

"I need his address and phone number. His name's Mori. Used to be part of a host club."

Tsunade looked at her.

"A _high school _host club!" Diana exclaimed. "I didn't attend it!"

"Why do you need his information?" Tsunade put down the cake and turned to her laptop. "Is he hot? He has to be. Part of a host club. A _high school _host club, you said?"

"Ouran."

"How do you spell that?" A few clicks and clacks later, "Oh, there he is. …Oooh. Diana, I didn't realize this was your type. He's so…"

"That's not my type. Stop jumping to conclusions."

"That's a relief. He looks terrifying."

"He's actually really kind."

"Oh yeah?"

"And insightful. It's amazing. It's like he can see into the human soul. And his voice is calming."

Tsunade regarded her out of the corner of her eyes. "Uh huuuuh. Are you turning into a stalker now, Diana?"

"No, seriously, did you find the information?"

"Still looking. Takashi Morinozuka."

"You Japs and your names. Always a mouthful."

"Watch it, white girl."

"Sorry. …Tsunade…"

"Hmm?"

"I'm sorry I didn't get you a present. I had one picked out…" Diana looked at her purse sitting amongst the open textbooks and lip glosses and the lamp and CD cases and bowls and unwashed cups stained with dried coffee on Tsunade's desk. "I decided you needed something better at the last minute."

"Damn right I do."

Diana sent her an amused glance. She had no idea what Diana had almost given her.

"By the way, aren't you going to call your parents to let them know you're all right?"

Diana cocked her brows. "You want me to tell them there was a terrorist attack?"

"Well, haven't they seen the news?"

"No. Most likely they won't find out about it until my mom goes into work on Monday. Just as long as I sound okay on the phone, I won't have to address it."

"Found it! Here, I'm putting it into your cell phone."

"Thanks. Can we go drive over and see him tomorrow?"

Tsunade choked on her cake. "_What?_"

Diana sank into her own blanket cocoon. "This is important, Tsunade. We… We both know someone from the accident."

Tsunade's mouth became a perfect 'o'. She took another bite. "I'll have to ask Yuri if he's all right with it. He usually has work tomorrow."

"It's okay. If I can just be dropped off…" _Well, it's not like Izaya will be chasing me anymore this time. _"I'll be okay if I can just be dropped off there."

"If you say so." Tsunade went back to her cake. "Give him my regards."

Diana met her eyes and after a moment, she smiled. "That won't be necessary, I think."

"Oh. Your mutual friend is okay?"

Diana closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall. "He's going to be. I'll make it so."

* * *

><p>"That him?" Yuri stalled the car. "Nine twenty-five. He's five minutes early as well."<p>

Diana moved to unlock the door. _Oops._ Her right hand wouldn't help her unlock anything. She unlocked it with her left hand and stepped out onto the chilly road, looking over the relatively deserted roadway at the tall man standing in front of the apartment.

She thanked Yuri and crossed the street, hugging Tsunade's sweater tighter about herself and wondering if it would start raining. There were goosebumps along her back. She waved goodbye to Yuri, then faced the figure at the top of a mini-flight of steps. He was wearing a navy cardigan and cargo pants, gray eyes sharp, though red-rimmed.

"Mori," she said.

He raised his brows.

"Wait, you don't know me yet. Sorry. Diana Reed." She extended a hand and shivered when their hands met.

"Come inside," he said. "It is cold."

The apartment was spotless clean, cleaner than Kaoru's. Or so she thought until she saw past the sofa set. The living room was pretty much a fluffy ground zero. A young, blond man slept amidst a myriad stuffed bunnies. He was covered in bunnies. His blanket might have been bunnies. Might have been.

Mori tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped. He pointed up the stairs—_they have stairs inside the separate apartments?—_and led her into what she believed were his quarters.

There was a roll along the side of the wall, where he must have slept, and a sparse desk with a table lamp. The bookshelves were filled with martial arts trophies. There was a single, body-length mirror hanging from a closet door. The wide center of the room seemed large enough to spar in.

She felt prickling at the back of her neck. Last time she had seen Mori, he was comforting Kaoru. That was after he had done some mourning of his own. That was at a point when he favored her because he thought she was Kaoru's girlfriend. If she didn't watch what she said, she might end up getting more than a punch in the stomach and a smack across the face.

God, she was hurting everywhere.

"Did you know him from the host club?"

She looked up. She didn't expect him to speak first. "What makes you think that?"

"You knew my name," said Mori. "And, excuse me for not recognizing you. I thought that might have had something to do with it."

"Oh. You thought I came for comfort?" Diana thought back to her text. _Must talk about Ootori. Need your help. _Diana shook her head. The fact that he was willing to let in an absolute stranger, to comfort someone else when he himself needed it much more. "You're amazing," she said with a smile. Then she wiped away the smile. "I'm not here to mourn for Kyouya Ootori."

She liked the look of surprise on his face. "I'm here to save him," she went on. "And everything I am going to say is going to sound crazy, I already sound crazy but…but…a very dear friend of yours—"_ours_ "—once told me, you don't judge. You just listen, you understand. You support. Mori in a nutshell. I need that. I need that right now. So, please, listen."

Mori said nothing. Diana looked down and fingered her purse. "I don't know how I can prove to you what I am about to say is true. I can only proffer the things that I know at the moment in an effort to earn your trust. The bomb yesterday was on the right, rear side of the double-decker. Tomorrow, you are going to visit Kaoru to tell him to come back. On Tuesday morning, the Japanese police force is going to declare a man named Mitsuo Kubo responsible for yesterday's attack. On Tuesday night, Kyouya's funeral. On Wednesday, Tamaki and Haruhi will surprise visit Kaoru and Hikaru will fly in and stay with you and Hunny. Oh, that must have been Hunny. And on Thursday, Hikaru will try to go and—" _I'm not there anymore_… "—he will surprise visit Kaoru as well. I—I know that—"

He wasn't saying anything. Why wasn't he saying anything?

"I…" She looked up and started. "Wait. Mori. Are you sleeping?"

He blinked.

Wiping away her tears, she said, "You are not going to believe me when I say this, but I…I can go back…and change what happened. I want to save those people, I want to stop the bomb. But I need help. I need to know how Mitsuo Kubo organized the attack. I need to know how to stop it. I have to find him and talk to him before the government catches him, and I may not even have 36 hours to do it."

Mori looked at her, then turned around and headed back downstairs.

"Wait…what…" Diana followed after him. "Mori…wait! …Say something!"

"Those people are gone."

Diana stopped halfway down the flight. "No…you can't be saying that. Not _you_."

"Please, do not put yourself in harm's way." Mori stopped in front the breakfast bar. "And show yourself the way out."

_He thinks I am deluding myself. _"Mori, I… I know Kaoru's secret…the one that Tamaki and Haruhi and Hunny don't know."

Mori turned.

"And I know that Kyouya would never have wanted the club to splinter the way it did over the last four years. And that Kyouya warned against using 'password' for a password, the way Kaoru's laptop is set up right now. And…" The floor was blurring before her. "And you told me that Kaoru was the most compassionate member of the host club seven years ago, and if I judged him now I would miss a lot about him."

Kaoru wouldn't remember her.

"Please," she whispered, "I don't have anyone else whom I can ask this favor right now. If you think I am delusional, could you possibly go along with it until Tuesday morning? I just need to find Kubo. Just that long…"

"Takashi." Hunny stood stock-still in the semi-darkness of the living room. "What secret?"

Mori gave Diana a sidelong glance, as if daring her to speak a word. They could hear the flush of a toilet in some distant room of another apartment, and footsteps from above the ceiling. The sun had broken through the clouds and was creeping at the base of the living room curtains. A slit of light fell across Hunny's face and glinted off of his rumpled hair.

_Ding ding ding! _

Diana squeaked. The two men looked at the doorway right away. "Tamaki's the only one who rings like that," said Mori.

"Takashi, you'll tell me, won't you?" said Hunny.

"I need to go," said Diana. "Is there a back way out? I'll wait at the coffee shop I saw on the corner."

Hunny hopped onto the sofa and leaped over its back, landing at the curtains. With a sharp jerk, the blinds behind them crashed aside. Diana squinted. A fire escape.

"Thanks, Hunny!" she said as she hopped out amid the sound of more vigorous bell-ringing. "Come find me. I'll explain later!"

Hunny nodded and slid shut the door, closing the blinds and leaving Diana six storeys aboveground. The world beneath the fading blue sneakers Tsunade had lent her had eight, slick, black grille steps per floor. Her shins looked like the surface of the moon this morning, and every step since had hurt like hell.

Forty-eight steps later, Diana considered the final ladder hanging seven feet up from the street. She had bit her tongue for so long to balance out the pain that she didn't think she could unlock her jaw. The drop was going to kill her.

"No, no, no," Diana said, breathing in and leaning over the ladder. The alleyway was completely deserted except for a garbage receptacle along the brick wall. "Diana, you climb down and you'll be dangling only two feet into the air." Her jeans' pocket caught on the top rung of the ladder and she fidgeted, wincing at the steady pulses emanating from her shins. "Just go down the ladder, go down—crap!" She looked at her purse, which had dropped from her shoulder. She looked down the length of the alleyway. Still no one. "Okay. No pressure. The purse isn't about to sprout legs and run off. Or…what is it doing…"

The purse in question had grown a furry tail and was dragging itself away from her.

"This can't be happening. HEY!" Diana leaped from the ladder. "OUCH! OUCH! Owwwww… FUCK! Dammit! NO! STUPID CAT! GIVE THAT BACK TO ME! GIVE IT BACK!"

* * *

><p>"REEED-CHAAAAAN!" Mitsukuni Haninozuka barreled across the aisles of the coffee shop and gathered Diana's head and hair into a hug.<p>

"Uuuuh…"

"Reed-chan, did we keep you waiting long?" Hunny took a seat across from her and picked up a booklet advertising the Peppermint Salt Caramel Brulee.

"Excuse me," said Mori, also taking a seat beside her.

Diana placed her cell phone flat across the table. "Here are my notes on Mitsuo Kubo." She scrolled through them with her finger. "It's three thirty now, so we have less than thirty hours left."

"You want to talk to _this _guy?" asked Hunny, examining the picture from the article she was showing them. "He's in the biggest prison in Japan. He's in Tokyo. How are we possibly going to talk to him?"

"He can't have been if he planted that bomb yesterday morning. Or earlier. Come to think of it, we should go to the prison to find out how he got out, and the bus terminals to find out how he got in and did his doing. But we also have to find out which terminal it was. He has to have an accomplice as well. There's no way he could have busted out of prison on his own and gathered all of that material in…wait, how long did he have?"

"Stop."

Hunny and Diana traded glances. "Mori?" said Diana.

"What are you doing, precisely? What exactly do you hope to accomplish that the police cannot do right now?" Mori looked

"Or the yakuza," added Hunny.

"The yakuza?" Diana frowned. "Wait! The Ootori's have those. I forgot about that."

"May I take your order please?"

Mori waited for the waiter to take off in a quest for the three cheesecakes Hunny ordered, then said, "There is nothing you can do to change the past. If Kubo is going to be arrested on Tuesday as you say, then let it be. What is our interference going to contribute to this?"

Diana looked hard at Mori for a moment. She addressed Hunny instead. "Hunny, do you want to see Kyouya again?"

"_Miss Reed_." Mori's voice was dangerous.

"Do you want to see him _alive_?"

Mori was rising already.

"Takashi, sit down." Hunny matched Diana's eyes. "We don't have anything to lose, right?"

She couldn't tell if he was addressing her or Mori. Hunny flashed a magnanimous smile. A Red Velvet Cheesecake floated into her vision and came to a stop in front of Hunny's face. Then an Oreo Delight. Then a Carrot-Cake Cheesecake.

"Do you want some?" Hunny asked Diana, arming himself with a knife and a fork.

"No," Diana said, a little lost. She didn't really believe he ordered three cheesecakes just for himself until Mori lined them up from him.

Hunny stuck a bite of Red Velvet into his face before continuing. "The way I see it—" he started.

("Hunny, don't talk with your mouth full," intoned Mori.)

"—is that…_mmm! _…There's nothing left to lose. It'll be like playing detective, Takashi! Ah-oom!" Hunny took another grandiose bite and held up the last half of the cheesecake for the next one. "Let's play!"

"It sounds like a dangerous game," said Mori.

"He he," Diana gave an awkward laughed. "You wouldn't say."

Mori clasped his hands together and rested his chin upon them. "So where do we begin?"

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes: If anyone is curious as to the thought that goes into writing this story...<strong>

**Character Development: (smug grin) I am actually quite pleased with the way Diana is turning out. Given the first chapter from her perspective, she was so...happy. It was wonderful writing the beginning of that chapter; the narrative style and descriptions themselves lifted my spirits. Then when she met Kaoru, she was so insecure, so much out of her element, so much at his mercy. I was actually quite concerned regarding how I would turn the Diana of the past into the Diana that Kyouya comes to know. Now this Diana just barges into Mori and Hunny's life and generally expects their help, which came to me as a complete surprise. I couldn't forcibly make her more...shy...polite. The story just writes itself on its own. **

**Frameworks: The reporter makes me happy too, actually. As some of you might have noticed, I tried framing this story in several ways. For example, the little bits of reporting in the Kaoru Arc used for transitions. I regret that I was unable to make consistent use of that technique, nor was there a particular standard as to when it was invoked. Sometimes it was a tool for revealing information that I didn't want to explicitly state. Sometimes there was a fantastic line I just had to include. Regardless of that, however, I found those reports especially delightful because those reports technically end up un-existing. (Un-existing! Can you believe!) Furthermore, the technique ends in this arc in a logical manner: Diana's interactions with the reporter in this arc prevented it from happening. However, were I to write a novel, this lack of consistency would probably be unappreciated; once a reader is accustomed to a particular structure to the story, just as they become accustomed to the rules of the universe the author creates, breaking that structure tends to be distracting and pulls the reader out of the story. My sincerest apologies for this.**

**I'll continue this discussion in the next chapter. ;) See you later!**


	11. The Detective

**Chapter 11, ladies and gentleman. The second arc is gearing up to go into full swing!**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 11: The Detective<strong>

_I'm a detective, not a policeman. We just happen to be…certified by them._

* * *

><p>"When I am done with this, I am never going to Starbucks ever again."<p>

Mori glanced Diana's way as he continued to check text messages he had been sending. To Kaoru, she noticed.

"I feel like a homeless person," she said to her coffee cup. "I haven't seen my own apartment in seven days. I've been subsisting on cake and coffee for the last thirty-six hours. I swear, if I have any more cake, I am going to explode." She winced at Mori's expression. "Bad joke, huh? What's taking him so long! Oh. My cell phone's battery's dying. Hey, can you hook up my charger to…? Thanks."

Given Kaoru's sterling report on Mori's character, he sure wasn't easy to talk to. Diana cast another cursory glance out the windows at the police station across the street. No Hunny in sight. There was a man interviewing for a manager position in the table to Diana's right, and a few students hypnotized by their laptops. Two girls were chatting in the far corner, and a woman in a blue beret blowing on her coffee, looking back at her. Diana had let her eyes rest on the woman in curiosity, but her spine started to prickle when she saw the woman would not look away.

"Mori," she whispered, taking a drink of her coffee—and then feeling foolish when there was none. The woman, dressed in a boy's black school uniform, stood up, her eyes never leaving Diana's face. _Here goes_, thought Diana as she crossed her legs and watched the woman approach.

"Shirogane Naoto," said the woman, flashing a police badge at her before pocketing it again.

Mori sat up straight as Shirogane, in one swift movement, wrapped a foot around a chair leg of a chair from the neighboring table and launch it towards theirs. She caught the back with her hand, preventing it from crashing into the table and straddling it backwards as she continued speaking. "I know I've seen you before."

Diana started. "You have. Yesterday at the scene of the incident. I saw you there, showing others the badge and asking questions or giving orders or something."

"I was looking for you."

"What?"

"You did something very strange at that limousine yesterday."

Mori shot her a look.

"And after the explosion, I lost sight of you."

Diana deflated, propping her head up with a hand. "Not again."

Shirogane glanced over to Mori. "I am trying to find the perpetrators of this incident, so I don't think you'll mind if I ask you a few questions."

Mori shook his head.

"All right then," said Shirogane, taking out a pen and notepad, along with a recorder. "How did you find out about this?"

Diana stole another glance out the windows as Mori answered Shirogane's questions. Hunny was coming out of the building, about to cross the street. She looked away, for a moment too afraid to see if he would make it to the other side, if there would be another sound that would be the end of all sound itself. But she couldn't look away for long. Still a red light for him.

"And you are…?" Shirogane was speaking to her.

"Reed. Diana Reed."

"Where were _you _on the night before the accident."

"I was…" Diana stopped. The Friday night before had been more than a week ago. She started a few more attempts and stopped again. "I don't remember anymore."

Shirogane looked over her shoulder and caught sight of Hunny coming into the store. "Is that who you've been waiting for?" she said, glancing at Diana, her hand inching towards a pistol.

"Don't worry," Diana said. "He's just a friend… An acquaintance."

Hunny beamed at them, appraising Shirogane curiously. "Who's this, Takashi?"

Shirogane flashed him her badge and he flashed her a grin.

"You got us a real detective?" Hunny laughed. "We make an amazing team already!"

Shirogane had opened her mouth to say something and faltered.

Hunny dropped the smile. "You're right, Diana. Kubo broke out five days ago."

"Five days?" Diana unhooked her cell phone from the charger and started taking notes.

"What are you talking about?" Shirogane peeked at her notes slyly. Diana leaned forward on the table and openly pushed it closer to the detective.

"This is the man the Japanese police declares responsible thirty hours from now," said Diana. She held Shirogane's eyes with the assurance of escape via Juiz. It seemed like cheating life did some things to her confidence, and she was feeling better for it—there had to be some consolation for her aching shins and splinted right hand and scarred cheek and bruised ego.

"She sent me in to ask questions at the police station," added Hunny, "because she already had trouble with them yesterday."

"We have a few more pieces of information," Mori spoke at last. "If you'd like to help us. We are all ordinary citizens who lost a mutual friend yesterday morning. We have no experience with these situations, so any expertise you could provide would be a great help."

"There is going to be a funeral service Tuesday night, for our friend, Ootori Kyouya." Diana was relieved that Mori had finally taken interest. She answered their blank looks by adding, "This might have been an assassination attempt, so it might be useful for her to attend that as well."

"You've…" Mori cleared his throat. "You've thought about this a lot."

Shirogane stood up, prompting Mori and Diana to do the same. "Let's find somewhere else to talk. I have a car."

* * *

><p>"Wow! How long did it take for you to get a hold of these?" Hunny stared at the screen displaying six security camera viewpoints of the intersection minutes before the explosion. He rested against the desk stationed in the center of the room, careful not to rest his hands near the detective's laptop. "So this is what the police do…"<p>

"This is not what the police do," responded Shirogane, fixated on the laptop controls of the looped footage. She leaned against the desk and crossed her arms. "I'm a detective, not a policeman. We just happen to be…certified by them."

Mori rifled through a binder detailing the victims. Diana, who had been pacing behind the detective, saw that he had stopped at Ootori Kyouya's page.

"Diana, what are you doing?" asked Hunny.

They all looked up at the screen to see her whacking her shoes against the street-light pole.

"My heels were giving out," Diana answered blankly. Shirogane gave her a sidelong glance. "Where's the reporter?"

"What reporter?" Shirogane looked back at the screen. No one answered as the bus came swerving around the corner, the silent footage suddenly blasted brown and white from the explosion. Two of the cameras went completely black afterwards, and the third camera had too much smoke in front of it to show anything. Hunny and Mori watched stared at the limousine turned on its back.

Hunny turned, crashing into Shirogane's desk and almost knocking the laptop over as he reeled past Mori and swung open the door. Mori's voice spoke over the fading footsteps.

"Diana, what are you doing?"

Diana watched herself crawl into the limousine. "I…wanted to see him."

The room suddenly filled with the sound of ringing. Mori left the room, answering his phone. Shirogane turned away from her laptop and leaned against the desk, facing Diana and saying nothing. She had the kind of look in her eyes that turned every aspect of life into either a measurement, percentage, or some kind of quantification, and it seemed evident to Diana that she had landed in the red from the beginning.

_This looks so bad. I am the only one acting suspicious in this footage. I shouldn't even know that in the limo was Kyouya Ootori._

Mori stepped back in. "Funeral on Tuesday evening," he announced. "Just like you said."

Diana spoke before the detective could begin. "Shirogane, you could investigate me all you want. I know, I know what this looks like and I have no plausible defense against your suspicions. But I would really prefer to make some progress in my understanding of what is going on and how to stop it from happening…again," she tacked on. "If we work together, you could end up doing both, but I need your help, and I need to be unhindered. You can have my identity information and you can track my bank and credit cards; I promise you I won't do anything. So please. Bear with me for the next week. This is everything I can give you."

"Taking a suspect's suggestions?" Shirogane chuckled. "Not likely. But at the moment you are providing me leads that cannot go ignored. This might be a wild goose chase, but I have no option."

Diana sighed with relief.

"One thing though. Why Tuesday night?"

"Because there is an important wedding happening on Saturday," responded Diana automatically. Mori looked at her. She shrugged. "So…about Kubo."

* * *

><p>"I'm sorry to have to send you back on the trains," said Shirogane as she pulled over to the curb.<p>

"It's only because you're working so hard," said Hunny. "We don't mind at all! I don't remember the last time we went on a train, right, Takashi?"

"What?"

Diana waited for the two men to climb out before addressing Shirogane's unspoken question. "These guys are filthy rich." She rolled her eyes. They had taken a taxi during the day, but rush hour made it impossible for the detective to drive them back in a timely manner. "You have my number. Text me any time you find…anything. Are you sure there isn't something I can do?"

"Frankly, you'd just get in the way. As long as you're not selling me out behind my back…"

"Oh. Ah…no worries then… See you soon." She clambered out of the car.

"Reed."

"Yes?"

Shirogane started looking into the side view mirror, getting ready to merge back in with traffic. "I wouldn't go home today, if I were you."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Call me if you need me."

And with that, the woman started to drive before Diana could even shut the door. It closed itself as Shirogane merged with traffic. She was gone within seconds.

"Wow," said Hunny behind Diana. "That woman."

"Yeah," said Diana. "That woman."

* * *

><p>Mori allowed her to stay in his apartment, leaving her in his gigantic room with the empty space and the cold trophies. However, all three of them fell fast into deep slumber, and Diana found herself coming awake to her text tone.<p>

_Found him. _

It was eight o'clock, a reasonable time to be up on a Monday morning. _Did that woman get any sleep for this? _Diana yawned and rose and stretched and winced and realized she had less than twenty-four hours with this man. _Drive carefully, Shirogane! _

"Mori!" He had walked into her in the midst of donning a T-shirt as he walked out of the bathroom.

He pulled his head out of his shirt. "Are you okay?"

"Startled, just a little."

"The yellow toothbrush is yours, toothpaste in the drawer, and I took out all our creams and lotions. They're on the sink." He disappeared downstairs.

_Wow. _She stepped into the long bathroom, examining the array when she heard his footsteps again.

"Towel," he said, stepping back into the bathroom.

She wedged herself against the sink to allow him to reach the cabinets on the other side of the bathroom, beyond the washing and drying machines. _He's so **big**._ Regardless of how outrageously large the bathroom was, he made it feel small. He was about to place the towel along the top rim that held the shower curtains, then looked down at her again and decided against it.

"Here," he said, handing it to her. "I'll leave you a change of clothes outside."

Diana nodded, rendered mute. She locked the door after him and turned to her frazzled reflection in the mirror. _Wow._

* * *

><p>"MOORIIIIIIIIII! HUNNY IS STEALING MY CLOTHES!"<p>

* * *

><p>Shirogane was leaning against her car, nursing a cup of coffee, when they arrived. Mori parked in one of the visitor parking spots in front of her office and ordered Hunny out of the car. He gave Diana in the passenger seat a sidelong glance before exiting himself.<p>

The detective took one look at Diana's expression and said, "I'm not even going to ask."

"Thank you. Now get in the car and shut up and drive."

As the two women automatically proceeded to get in the front seats, Hunny and Mori exchanged glances and daintily snuck into the back.

* * *

><p>"So what is our plan of action?" asked the detective. The four considered the rundown video rental store supposedly housing their suspect.<p>

"We go in and knock him silly until he talks."

Shirogane looked at Diana. "_That's_ our plan?"

"I don't know—I don't chase down criminals in my line of work!"

"…What _do_ you do?"

Diana glowered at her. "I don't have a job. Thanks to that stupid explosion, I never got to my interview. Now can we please move our molasses and get to work?" She stepped out of the car and slammed the door.

"This is going to be a long day," muttered Hunny.

"Long _day_?This is going to be a long _week_," said the detective. "If she doesn't get us killed first, that is." She loaded her pistol and looked after Diana, who stood waiting with her back turned to them. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

* * *

><p>Shirogane kicked aside Mitsuo Kubo's arm. "Stoned."<p>

Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and remarkably plain, Kubo had the control of a drunken sloth. He ambled unpredictably, even with Shirogane's pistol trained upon him. His own armament he had left abandoned in the other room, and he lolled about from one empty shelf to another until Shirogane delivered a kick in the abdomen and left him sprawled across the floor.

"So he blows up a few dozen civilians and tries to drug himself to death?" said Diana. She put her hands in the pockets of the green trousers Hunny lent her. "How long do you think he's been this way?"

Mori kept watch on the exits and out the window while Hunny kept an eye on the car. The sun was shining off the windshield and reflecting upon the ceiling, an aspect Kubo currently found wildly amusing.

"A while," said Shirogane. "I was confident he would be alone, so I called you hoping you could bring your friends in case I needed backup."

"What?"

Shirogane shrugged. "It doesn't hurt to have a few national martial arts champions in the backseats."

"Right." Diana rolled her eyes, watching the reflected sun flicker on the ceiling with the fascinated Kubo.

"Tall One, pick him up and shove him into the trunk. I will hand him over to the police after we're done with him. Reed, Short Stuff, we're scouting the area to find his equipment."

"Short Stuff?" Hunny exclaimed.

* * *

><p>Diana Reed was not invited to Ootori Kyouya's wedding. As such, one of the private secretaries bowed apology to Hunny and Mori for the inconvenience and hurried them away before Hunny could finish his protests. Diana was left standing at the top of the stairway of the Kohaku International Center, trying to evaporate out of sight of the hundred or so Asian folk dressed their smartest black. There was a howling hot wind jangling the new earrings Hunny had picked out for her, and it kept threatening to blow her cardigan into her face. Well, at least she wouldn't have to see anyone then.<p>

The center had an enormous courtyard with a fountain that ran two hundred feet down the lane away from the lines. Diana shrugged her purse off her shoulder and caught it in her hand, and swung it back and forth as she made her way to the lighted fountain, stepping onto the raised bordering with a sigh. The moment they had returned to Mori's apartment last afternoon, Diana hit the hay and was knocked out for a solid twenty-four hours until Hunny came barging into the room convinced she was dead. She called a taxi to go shopping in a panic to find the first black dress that looked her size, and Hunny stowed away with her before she could kick him out of the car. At the very least, he paid for the taxi and the dress and the earrings, and in due time she would go back and literally erase her debts, so she felt nothing for it until she was taking these steps along the fountain, looking at the six golden lights rotating underwater. _Wasted time. _She was sad that she had wasted time. Wasted his efforts.

_Time to call Mom, I guess._ She should have done so on Saturday. Her mother counted on it. Looked forward to it. But Diana couldn't bring herself to do it. Wasn't sure what she was going to end up saying, since she could hardly keep from blurting out all of her life's grief in those moments. That was the Diana she wouldn't let the world see. Diana at her lowest. And she was pretty close to rock bottom at this time.

"They wouldn't let you in either?"

Diana laughed. Shirogane in a tuxedo. Figures. "I'll be your date for tonight, huh?"

"Not really."

_That was a sharp reply… _

"I have an update for you. And then I'm going back to find another way in."

Diana tried to recover with a compliment. "You always have your head in the game."

"And you've really lost the ball right now, haven't you?"

"What?" Diana clutched her purse in her hand, crushing it down until she could feel the tubes of lip gloss and cell phone and the time machine through it.

"What are you doing here?" Shirogane crossed her arms. "I don't know what your purpose was in trying to find Kubo yesterday, but you're acting like your role is over now. It's not. Kubo was a dead end."

"What?"

Shirogane shook her head. "I have no reason to suspect him of anything, not even breaking himself out of prison. He doesn't know the first thing about the type of explosive that was on that bus. Where did you get your information?"

Diana looked at the lights near her feet. "You mean to say the police announced the wrong man on purpose, regardless of how obviously wrong it was?"

Shirogane frowned. "Talking with you is a matter of parsing which sixty percent is on the dime." She shrugged. "Let me know if you find out anything else. I'll do the same. Call me if you need me."

Shirogane turned and started walking back to the procession still entering the building, her hands turned in to her coat pockets, her head turned up to the marching clouds. The moon was swallowed whole by a particularly threatening mass. Diana sighed, listening to the chorus of water, and felt a drop graze her face. She looked up, felt the raindrops sliding down her face like tears. When she looked back down, she saw that Shirogane had turned back to her with a smirk on her face. Behind her, the remaining procession was flooding uncontrollably into the building.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Notes:<strong>

**Frameworks continued: I left off last time discussing frameworks, and how a changing structure of the story results in a "jolt" for the readers, taking them out of the moment of the story. I realize there is unfortunately a powerful jolt in the switch from Kyouya's POV to Diana's. At that time I was grappling with many unknown variables-what was actually happening in the story, who was responsible for the attack, what did Diana have to do, how would the time machine/Juiz work, and most importantly, how would it be possible for Kyouya to fall in love with a woman within the span of one week. **

**At that time, I was truly excited by the idea that I would be able to constantly write from Kyouya's POV the same week, and each time readers would be picking up on the differences. I wanted the audience to watch _Diana _change with each run-through, going from completely clueless to completely in control. I wanted the audience to learn to sympathize with her because as she is constantly pulled through trial after trial after trial trying to save Kyouya, she starts falling in love with him, but he keeps forgetting her. I wanted a bitterness in the story, that twinge of sadness and anger. I myself am not sold on the idea that two people could fall in love in a week given one exception: Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, in which the protagonist and the necessary smexy female side-kick go through so much hell and have to establish a bond of trust with each other in their fight for survival strong enough to carry them through decades of married life. A mutual respect through trust sort of thing. A contract. **

**Well, that didn't happen-the Kyouya POV thing, I mean. Providing a jam-packed prologue and introducing the audience to the completely-in-control Diana was the problem: there was no acceptable way to start from the beginning then without boring the audience, and I am still grappling with how to show Diana explaining to Kyouya what she learned when and how without using flashbacks. I do not like flashbacks. It is overused and there should be more creative ways to present that information. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive about it because of how it is abused in Naruto and bad Bollywood movies. (cringe)**

**A note to E.M. Megs: thanks to your comment. I am working extra hard to devise more conflicts that prevent Diana from getting her way. I didn't realize the conflict I _was _providing was not directly conflict against the protagonist. I am happy to say you have actually forced me to rewrite some of the next parts. ;) Critique is important! I thank you for yours! Very insightful-I've been with the story too long to see the obvious! Thank you!**

**Anyways! ****Tune in next time for Chapter 12! **


	12. Champagne

**It's not dead yet! Thanks to oreobabez for bringing me back! ;)**

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 12: Champagne<strong>

_What's that? Is this the me you've never seen before? Let me tell you something, Mori. I _never_. Forget. Me._

* * *

><p>"It's too perfect," Shirogane muttered under her breath. They had entered the lobby and were jostled into the ceremony hall with hundreds of other doctors and businessmen, entertainers and noisy families. Shirogane pointed out Kyouya's brother, who sat wiping his eyes upon the table at the end of the dais, his sister with a hand on her shoulder.<p>

Diana's breath was being sucked into a whirlpool at the base of her stomach. She clasped Shirogane's arm tighter and realized she was actually a half an inch taller than the woman. Shirogane looked at her. However long she had been passing for a man, she didn't have experience escorting another woman anywhere.

"Just pretend you are preoccupied with your cell phone battery dying," advised Shirogane, leaning into her ear. "Like you can't text your best friend about troublesome developments at your marketing job, and how in the world are you going to sit through an hour and a half without it. And call me Naoto."

"All right. Naoto."

"I am going to be leaving you soon. I want to hear what the Ootoris are saying, or maybe I'll be pacing the perimeter to see what I can pick up from security. I want you to visit the refreshments often. That is where people are most likely to be lax."

"All right."

"And don't go to the bathroom."

"What?"

"They are checking people's cards in the hallways."

Diana needed to go to the bathroom.

"And now we part," Naoto said, her self and her arm swallowed into the crowd.

Diana slowly scanned the people around her, taking out her cell phone and casually checking her email to improve her show of belonging. Which way were the refreshments? The crowd was dispersing now, the forest of people thinning out as people sat down to round tables that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The seats were all reserved, and with every second fewer people remained standing. At this pace, Diana would be the only one… In a panic, Diana found a couple with a stroller trying to shush their baby, and she quickly took the open seat beside them, giving the mother a sympathetic smile. She casually knocked down the name stand that marked the seat as she waved at the child, and a thundering roar of applause turned the mother's attention away to the microphone stand on the center of the stage at the other end of the room.

If the stage was on the other side, then she must be closer to the back, where the refreshments were most likely to be served. But she couldn't look backwards. The people behind her would think it strange. She couldn't tell who was speaking first. Perhaps a brother. Next it seemed a business partner. The Japanese was coming to a point where she was starting to miss more than a few words. It had been fifteen minutes. A reasonable enough time to excuse herself for a moment to gather refreshments.

There weren't many people in the back yet. Only a security officer who appraised her swiftly and deemed her a non-threat. Soft drinks, lemonade, and a champagne cascade. As an American, she technically wasn't old enough.

But why not?

She brought a glass of champagne back with her, unable to hear for the next fifteen minutes with the baby kicking up a fuss again. The fourth time she went back, at the tail of intermission, she realized the same security officer had watched her take three glasses of lemonade to dilute the champagne. She smiled at him nervously. "I…I need to go to the wash room." He shrugged and let her pass both ways, and by the time she was back, someone else she didn't care about was speaking on the stage already.

If she was going to try and make it through the next fifteen minutes… _More lemonade. _

A hand caught her wrist mid-reach.

"Kaoru!"

He narrowed his eyes. "Enjoying the view?"

Diana blinked.

"From _my _seat?"

Her mouth came to a perfect "o".

"Tch." Kaoru drank from his glass. "What?"

"Do you want it back? My apologies—everyone just started to sit down and—"

"Save it. It would be strange for someone else to be sitting there all of a sudden now. Just get out of my sight."

Diana promptly obliged, forgetting her lemonade. She resisted the urge to take out her cell phone and use the reverse camera to check what Kaoru was doing. It was too dark for that anyway.

The baby had finally settled down to a low coo as the lights came faded out, and while the mother breathed a sigh of relief, her husband beside her looked intently at the distance. There were coughs, and the sound of a Samsung phone shutting off, and whispers. Diana looked over to the stage. A tall, blonde man stood sharp in the white light, the casket behind him. He was grasping the microphone with one hand, and covering his eyes with the other. His soft sniff reverberated through the entire room, and when he finally rubbed his eyes and moved his hand away from his face, Diana realized it was Tamaki, a man she had only ever seen vibrant and boisterous. He covered his mouth this time as he looked out and surveyed the entirety of the audience again. Sniffed again. Looked down again.

There were stirrings, but the brink of a restless murmur was cut off almost at once. A woman had suddenly stepped into the light and hurried up the short staircase to stop at Tamaki's side. She quickly covered the microphone with her hand as she whispered into his ear, then pulled it out of the stand and held it up for her future husband to speak. He put his hand over Haruhi's and breathed deeply.

"Welcome! One and all!" Tamaki's voice filled the room in waves, with a minor echo that emphasized the aura of exultation he brought with his voice. He paused again, took another breath, and said, "You are all welcome here. You, the dearly beloved, the friends, the family, the business partners, the illustrious, the catering boys, the strangers, and everyone here." He swallowed. "Kyouya is a very. Bad. Man! He has cheated us all!"

The audience erupted immediately in nervous muttering. Diana could hardly imagine the look Ootori's father must have had on his face. She had seen him in a magazine, and he didn't look kindly.

"He has cheated _me_."

The audience grew silent.

"I am here to give a speech for him much earlier than expected. I was expecting another couple of years, you see," he said with a hollow chuckle, "because I was out hunting for a future wife for him. He found me my wife," he said, putting an arm around Haruhi's shoulders, "and I thought I'd return him the favor, but he really doesn't make it easy. See, I was waiting for his wedding…and now my best man's decided to leave a little too soon…without leaving me the speech he was preparing for mine."

Beside him, Haruhi had tears running down the length of her face. She couldn't wipe her face, but Diana found herself wiping her own instead.

"So now," Tamaki sniffed. "Now I am going to give you his wedding speech. Because I've realized, when it comes to making these speeches, the things that we say are practically the same." He paused. "The things that we _truly _say, through tears or through laughter, are truly…the same."

Haruhi handed Tamaki the wine glass she had been holding in her other hand. He raised it to the audience. "Today, we celebrate a man of great accomplishments! A man who, in every single way, made himself the most glorious bastard this world has ever seen! Scourge of the cruel! Prowler of the stock market! The up and coming tyrant of the medical kingdom! That is he, that is he, Kyouya Ootori, my friends.

"But he is more." Tamaki grinned. "He was the scion of the Ootori's, and though his father didn't know it, he was his own man. I'll tell you something—let me tell you a little secret. He'd kill me if he could for telling you this – which is why I am telling you this now. Kyouya, who was meant to inherit Ootori Medical, under a guise once bought it out completely. And slowly, slowly over time, bits and pieces started coming back. Ootori-san," Tamaki nodded to Kyouya's father, Diana imagined, "he is your son indeed."

Tamaki laughed. He was the only one laughing.

"But he is more. He is that chuckle I hear from the corner of the room whenever I announce my next great ambition. He's the flashing sun on a pair of glasses and sometimes, or maybe more times, I hear his words on my dearly beloved Haruhi's lips. He's the hidden pillar you didn't see, that made everything possible. He's the behind-the-scenes, the technicians, the props, the backstage itself. He was my partner in crime in the host club, and he was my first friend." Tamaki closed his eyes. "He was my best friend."

Diana slid a finger over the rim of the empty glass of champagne, biting her tongue. She felt her phone vibrating.

"And I feel," continued Tamaki, "that for every day of my life, I will still be begging him to come back. Because despite all the light shining upon me, despite all the marvels in my life, the world beyond these spotlights is so dark that I can't see it…and I relied on Kyouya to see for me, in that world beyond the light. I know I came here to say goodbye. But I won't. I won't."

Diana looked up. It seemed to her that Tamaki was surveying the audience. It seemed to her that he was searching for a face. And though it had to be impossible, he said so himself – he couldn't see anyone past the lights…it still seemed to her that his gaze fell on her, and he smiled.

"I won't."

A noise, from the back of the room. She didn't realize it at first. She looked back. Kaoru's clapping, lonely at first, then ballooning into a standing ovation. Eight hundred men and women rose to their feet in Kyouya's honor, but Diana wasn't one of them. Diana was already running. The clicks of her heels were lost in the thunderous applause that spilled out of the ceremony room. She barely saw Kaoru's coattail fly about the corner of the halls. Now he was running too, and if she couldn't catch him soon, he and his black tuxedo would be lost in the darkness of the night.

For the umpteenth time in the week, she slipped out of her heels and broke out into an all-out sprint over the red carpets and the dirty mats and the revolving door and the ice-marble steps and the wet grass when the road got prickly and pebbly and then to where it was greener on the other side. To the fountain.

A bottle of champagne in one hand and a wine glass in the other, Kaoru ambled unsteadily along the exact same steps Diana paced only an hour ago. Diana kept a distance, her stomach wrapping itself in knots. He downed the champagne in his glass, and with a roar of agony, hurled it into the water, where it bobbed back up, unharmed, refracting the golden light. Kaoru pulled the bottle to his lips next.

"Stop."

He did. He looked at her, for the first time registering she was there. "You?"

"Don't do it. Don't drink anymore."

Again, he made that "Tch!" sound as she approached. He screamed again and hurled the bottle into the water too. Then the right shoe she proffered him. And the left heel as well. And her first lip gloss, second lip gloss, third lip gloss.

"Wait, what _is_ this?" He stopped, swaying, to examine the fourth lip gloss she had offered to his rage, his words slurring.

"Oh good," Diana said. "I was just running out."

Kaoru looked back at her. "Who _are _you?"

Diana looked at the bottle bobbing at the surface too now, traced its circuit around the rectangular fountain with her eyes. "Diana." It wouldn't matter anyway.

Kaoru scoffed. "Why are you getting so familiar with me? My services at the host club not enough?"

"I am not a customer," she said through gritted teeth. "And I have earned the right to call you by name. Even if you don't remember."

Kaoru scoffed again and shook his head. "You women just get scarier as the days go by."

Biting on her tongue wasn't helping. "Dammit! How am I the first one to cry?"

Kaoru scoffed. "Yeah. Cry. Cry all the tears in the world for me, 'cause you know what?" He smirked and splashed into the fountain, pulling the floating bottle back out and raising it to his lips again. "I am _done _with that." He took a long swig from the bottle, tilting his head up, his Adam's apple bobbing as it poured down his throat.

"Kaoru! Stop!"

He slapped her hands away, spluttering and coughing. He shoved her into the water.

"Kaoru!"

Diana looked up. It was Mori, standing at the edge of the fountain behind her.

Kaoru swung wide his hands as if presenting himself upon a stage and bowed. "Welcome to the show, Mori!"

"You forget yourself," Mori stated.

"What's that? Is this the me you've never seen before?" Kaoru began to laugh. "Let me tell you something, Mori. I _never_. Forget. Me."

"You came to the funeral drunk, shamed the Ootori family, and now you're raving at the center in public!"

Kaoru wasn't listening. "I _never _forget me, Mori-senpai. He's the better man, all 'long. That's what I had been living with for the past three years. There's me, and there's _him_, Mori. Tamaki Suoh, the person who is not me." Kaoru announced it to the sky: "The anti-me! …and y'know what?" He looked back down to Diana, his clothes soaked knee-deep and his shoes only emerging out to slap water across her shoulders and face. "Y'know what?" He continued to kick the water as she turned her face away, climbing to her feet. "I _knew _it. I always had!" Kaoru continued to laugh. "The fact that he had to win. For Haruhi. He's better than the two of us _combined_!" The bottle came down at a punishing arc upon the rim of the memorial wall centered in the water fountain. For a second, the shattered remains of the bottom half of the bottle was caught sparkling in the air, but they didn't spin off in every direction like in the movies. They just skittered down the side and into the water.

_I can't help him,_ Diana thought, retreating away. She looked at the jagged remains of the bottle in Kaoru's bleeding hand. _I can't help him. I can't help him. I can't help him. _

"Diana," Mori said. "You and Hunny go in Naoto's car."

"But—"

"I have to take care of him."

Diana stepped away, wiping water off her face and shivering in her wet clothes. _What am I doing? What is the advantage of time if I can't __**do **__anything? _"Kaoru, _stop_!"

The jagged bottle had already slashed through the arm of Mori's jacket. But it was over before it fell to the water. Mori had twisted Kaoru's arms behind him so fast Diana hadn't even seen it until Kaoru was picking himself up from the water.

Diana started breathing again and rummaged in her purse for her cell phone. And stopped.

"Aren't you going to pick it up?" asked Kaoru.

No, it wasn't the TM that was ringing after all. She answered the phone. Naoto.

"Diana."

"What?" She was trying to understand what it was Kaoru was doing with his arm across his mouth. It looked to her like he was going to bite himself. Come to think of it, why did Mori let him free?

"It's about the accident."

"What is it?"

The human ear is an astounding organ. Whereas the sense of smell, taste and vision rely on the mix and match of chemical reactions, the sense of hearing is the only purely mechanical system, based completely on movement. With the aid of the brain in processing the starts and stops of spoken language, the vibrations caught upon the pinna – the outer ear – are funneled through the ear canal and bounce onto the ear drum, a 10 millimeter cone of skin that is in fact the only aspect of the ear that senses sound.

"You have to get out of here," said Naoto.

It is pulled rigid in the presence of low-pitch hums, the ear drum blocks background noise and picks up on the higher pitches that vibrate it with more vigor, hence controlling what is relayed into the inner ear, the physical-wave-to-electric-signal translation mechanism that in charge of communication with the brain. This reflex that causes the _stapedius muscle_ to contract and stretch the eardrum to block out noise comes into play when a person speaks as well – to stop the sound of her own voice from drowning out the sounds around her.

"Before the yakuza finds you."

The things Naoto was telling her were in there, somewhere. It was jammed somewhere along the process. Maybe the canal closed in on itself and sank her in a silent, underwater world, where the rush of her own blood was the only company she could keep if she couldn't start moving. Maybe the stapedius muscle had contracted so much to block out Kaoru's screaming that the ear drum could no longer vibrate to a sound. Or maybe she'd been screaming too, so her ear drums were completely blocked off. Was this why you sometimes could not hear your own scream?

Or maybe the electric signals were reaching her brain after all.

"Yakuza?"

They had something to say, those messages. But her brain was ignoring those, focused entirely on the input it received from another of her senses.

It started with a sudden change in light for Diana. She was still at a point in which she could not comprehend Kaoru and his actions, so her brain discarded those pieces on information in a hurry to analyze something that made sense. And it found that the change in light was coming from the water at her ankles. And the change in light was due to some dark substance that bucked in little waves closer and closer to her feet.

"The person that was supposed to be in the limousine… was Tamaki, not Kyouya."

And the dark substance that blocked the light originated like a vaporous cape from along Mori's person. As if his black suit was some amorphous garb, like Mori could suddenly disperse into a colony of bats, the darkness kept spreading and now it no longer made sense.

"I don't know who botched it…if this was the work of the yakuza."

So Diana moved, she was walking, skirting around the growing dark, the phone pressed into her ear, the words simply passing through. "…but nothing is lining up…" And she can finally see beyond Mori's shoulder and she promptly became momentarily blind. Not blind in the traditional sense. But effectively blind. _Attentional rubber-necking_: the brain's inability to process images for a short time after capturing an image erotic or traumatic.

"And they know that we know it."

The spliced bottle lodged in Mori's neck.

"They've already got me," Naoto said. "They're coming right now. Find another phone. They'll track this call and find you too."

"Okay," said Diana. She clicked off the phone. Kaoru had been keeping himself silent by screaming into his arm. Before she knew it, she had caught him by that arm and was dragging him away.

"No," said Kaoru.

"We have to go."

"But he's not dead yet!" said Kaoru.

"_We have to go!_"

He said nothing more. Witnessing Mori's last moments would not make the man less dead the next minute.

Diana looked out beyond the rolling lawn, where the streets began and the lights started flickering on. They had to get away. Somehow.

* * *

><p><em>Breaking news! A tragic disaster in an already tragic occasion! Reporting live from the Kohaku International Center, this is Izaya Orihara and my classic cameraman Hongshu! (Hongshu, show yourself. Okay good.) <em>

_The Ootori funeral today ended with the need for __**another **__funeral! The dead in question, Kyouya Ootori, is joined today by his dear friend, Takashi Morinozuka. He was found drowned in the fountain in front of the center, but the police state that he had drowned due to a broken bottle that had been lodged through his throat in the first place. _

_What's more interesting, perhaps, are the things that were left behind at the crime scene. A pair of black heels and three lip gloss sticks were found floating along the water, which leads us to believe there may have been a struggle involving a woman who had to defend her honor. Whether this is the story of a close call for this mysterious Cinderella is to be determined, however, as Morinozuka's close friends Tamaki Suoh and the Ootori family themselves insist Morinozuka would never do such a thing._

_Izaya Orihara here – and I'll be back with more!_

* * *

><p><strong>Dun dun DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN.<strong>

**Wow. So it has been eight months since my last post. Honestly, I got stuck here and came back to try to fix it multiple times. I actually had five versions of this chapter and three of the next already - so it kept undergoing completely different revisions. Even though I was able to flesh out multiple way this story could go, none of them enticed me. So I thought: "What is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen at this point in time?"**

**And then things started moving again.**

**I would really appreciate critique regarding that very last scene. Pacing-wise. **

**1. Was the dialogue interleaved with the description jerky? The importance is a flowing momentum, but if Naoto talking was getting in the way of what was happening, and it should have all been clumped together more so both aspects could flow more logically, that's something I need to know. **

**2. And all that detail about the sense of hearing - should that have been cut short? I realize that entire paragraph could be cut out (which is bad) since it stands quite independent of the rest. I don't know, I'm not a huge fan of that paragraph, but trying to slow down a scene is a favorite technique of mine when an author does it right.**

**3. And then there are other authors who just know when to NOT write something. I'm still trying to figure out how to write tense scenes, what to say, when I'm saying too much, when the reading is just going to start skimming. And what isn't even worth saying because the reader will know how to fill in the gap. **

**I don't know. What do you think?**


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